The Space Materials Testhouse provides assist­ance to ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, NL) in char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion and qual­i­fic­a­tion of mater­i­als and processes of indus­trial suppli­ers. The object­ives of this collab­or­a­tion is the assess­ment of new tech­no­logy for space missions in advance and the invest­ig­a­tions of fail­ures and anom­alies in present space missions.

Testing from mater­ial to flight hard­ware:

First, mater­i­als are to be screened on their basic prop­er­ties relev­ant for usage in space (for example outgass­ing). With this basic tests, the mater­i­als are selec­ted which are considered to manu­fac­ture bread­board- and engin­eer­ing models. These “BBs” and “EMs” are to be tested again on their beha­vior before select­ing the most prom­ising candid­ates to be used as flight hard­ware. Flight hard­ware can be tested a thermal vacuum cham­ber attached to a clean room class 10 000.

Material tests & mater­ial selec­tion:

Breadboard- & engin­eer­ing model tests:

Testing of flight hard­ware: