A Spacecraft that heals itself
 Building spacecraft is a tough job. They are precision pieces of engineering that have to survive in the airless environment of space, where temperatures can swing from hundreds of degrees Celsius to hundreds of degree below zero in moments. Once a spacecraft is in orbit, engineers have virtually no chance of repairing anything that breaks. But what if a spacecraft could fix itself?Thanks to a new study funded by ESA's General Studies Programme, and carried out by the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol, UK, engineers have taken a step towards that amazing possibility. They took their inspiration from nature. "When we cut ourselves we don't have to glue ourselves back together, instead we have a self-healing mechanism. Our blood hardens to form a protective seal for new skin to form underneath," says Dr Christopher Semprimoschnig, a materials scientist at ESA's European Space Technology Research Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, who oversaw the study The challenge for Semprimoschnig was to replicate the human process of healing small cracks before they can open up into anything more serious. In humans, the air chemically reacts with the blood, hardening it. In the airless environment of space, alternate mechanical veins have to be filled with liquid resin and a special hardener that leak out and mix when the fibres are broken.He imagined such cuts as analogous to the 'wear-and-tear' suffered by spacecraft. Extremes of temperature can cause small cracks to open in the superstructure, as can impacts by micrometeroids - small dust grains travelling at remarkable speeds of several kilometres per second. Over the lifetime of a mission the cracks build up, weakening the spacecraft until a catastrophic failure becomes inevitable. "We have taken the first step but there is at least a decade to go before this technology finds its way onto a spacecraft," says Semprimoschnig, who believes that larger scale tests are now needed. This was seized 4 u at ESA by Reseizer |
posted by Roland at 1/22/2006 04:10:00 PM
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