August 29, 2024 13:53

A new UV irradiation system, designed to test the resistance of materials for space applications to solar radiation outside Earth's atmosphere, has emerged from a collaboration between the ENEA Research Center in Frascati, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), and the Italian company Bemaide.

"This system allows for the continuous irradiation of samples for up to several thousand hours of equivalent exposure to solar radiation, providing real-time and remote control of the radiation dose delivered and its possible variations during the irradiation period," explains Paolo Di Lazzaro, a researcher at the ENEA Laboratory of Inertial Fusion, Plasmas, and Interdisciplinary Experiments. "Thanks to this technology, it is possible to conduct accelerated tests to accurately evaluate the effects of UV radiation on materials used in long-duration space missions."

The equipment has been used to irradiate a new type of inorganic coating deposited on the flexible surface (metallic or polymeric) of optical solar reflectors (OSRs).

In addition to tests conducted in an inert atmosphere (free of reactive substances), ENEA researchers have irradiated some samples in air to detect the synergistic effects between UV and oxygen in the material degradation process.

An improvement to the irradiation system is also under study, involving the replacement of the current mercury lamp with a UV LED array. This would more accurately reproduce the solar spectrum (in the spectral range of 200 nm to 400 nm) and reduce thermal effects, thus enabling irradiations in a vacuum as well as in a controlled atmosphere.

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