Material physicists at the Research School of Physics are creating materials to protect satellites from the harsh space environment – essentially sunscreen for satellites.

The sunscreen is to be used to protect components made from carbon fibre, a relatively new material for space, said Director of ANU InSpace, Professor Anna Moore.

“Material scientists have a unique ability to reinvent how we build things. That allows us to bring new ideas and new technologies to a regime that we have done very conventionally up until now,” she said.

The project is a collaboration with New Frontier Technologies, a company developing bespoke carbon fibre composite parts for rocket body structures and satellite structures.  

Carbon fibre promises huge advantages as a satellite material, said Dr Shankar Dutt, from the Material Physics Department.

“If we can make a satellite structure or a rocket body which has the same strength, same structural and mechanical strength, but maybe half the weight of what it is currently, we can save a lot of money, we can save on a lot of fuel.”

As a new material, the ability of coated carbon fibre to withstand the harsh environment of space needs to be explored. The coatings are being tested in the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF): the first part up for testing is a carbon fibre strut for a satellite.

The team are looking to protect the component from space radiation that includes atomic oxygen, UV and high-energy ions, and used HIAF to irradiate the strut with up to ten times more radiation than a satellite would endure in its normal life.

It's a harsh environment up there and we need to make sure that these parts last,” Professor Patrick Kluth from the Materials Physics Department said.

“Components need to be structurally very stable. They're also in a vacuum, so they need to be very dense and uniform - they can't have too many voids  in between the structures.

“You have to be very careful how you place and fabricate the parts so they don’t delaminate.”

Professor Moore said the coatings were essential for future space-based industries, such as microgravity research and pharmaceutical production in space.

“We want to be able to get vehicles and components back down to earth, but without protection from coatings, that might be very difficult to do so,” she said.