AN OVERVIEW ON INNOVATIVE COMPOSITE MATERIALS EMPLOYED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF MICROSATELLITES

Abstract

The space industry has a growing interest in microsatellite missions, which are frequently employed in the defense, agriculture, business intelligence, in case of disasters, in communications. The paper presents recent findings from the literature regarding the structure and properties of composite materials, in order to establish the possibilities of their use in the development of microsatellites, in the context of a sustainable development. Innovative composites must have dimensional stability during exposure to thermal cycling in space, low degree of outgassing, high resistance to microcracking, UV radiation, atomic oxygen, proton irradiation and orbital debris.

Keywords

• microsatellites
• composite materials
• structure
• properties polymer matrices
• properties reinforcing fillers