Silicone is used in the space industry for protecting underlying materials from atomic oxygen. This oxygen reacts with the silicone to form silicon dioxide, which is highly resistant to further attack. Our work is focussed on exploring the use of dielectric elastomer transducers (DETs) in the space sector. These devices often use silicone as their key elastomeric component, if a DET becomes oxidised its motion is at least severely impaired if not completely halted. We have developed a solution to this problem in the form of a protective coating. We present here results of ground-based testing testing of the coating.
KEYWORDS: Ultraviolet radiation, Astronomy, Earth's atmosphere, Atmospheric monitoring, Absorption, Near ultraviolet, Ozone, Solar processes, Signal to noise ratio, Wind energy
The ozone layer has a complex spectral absorption profile at NUV wavelengths. It is dependent on seasonal effects due to solar intensity, as well as atmospheric circulation of the ozone layer. Getting above this then becomes imperative for getting a usable SNR for scientific observations. GLUV is an affordable, long duration, high altitude balloon experiment which will fly a network of NUV telescopes at altitudes of 20-30 km. GLUV Pathfinder is a spectrometer based system to identify the sky background in the NUV, measuring this as a function of altitude, latitude, and seasonal phase in the regimes that the final GLUV project will experience. The development of dedicated NUV instrumentation is highly important for supernovae astronomy, as these higher energy wavelengths reveal their initial detonation conditions. GLUV is expected to capture the initial shocks of these events at a rate of 10+ per year of operation, well in excess of the few instances that have been seen to date
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