Accelerated Oxygen Source for Material Degradation Studies  

Physical Sciences, Inc. 

Andover, MA 
 

System for accelerated erosion testing of spacecraft materials in a simulated low-earth orbit environment

• Developed a source that accelerates atomic oxygen to velocities experienced in low earth orbit
• Device can generate beams of other atomic and diatomic gases to velocities tunable from 5 to 14 km/sec

• Sales of devices and services exceed $ 8.5 M
• Instruments have been sold to the European Space Agency, French Space Agency, and the Japanese Space Agency
• Technology has supported additional research studies on diamond film deposition and polishing, semiconductor processing, wafer etching and hyper thinning, high temperature superconductors, simulated rocket plumes, orbital energy accommodation, and spacecraft glows
• U.S. Patent 4,894,511

• Long term low Earth orbit exposure simulated in a period of hours
• Material testing for International Space Station

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