I am going to Hawaii in a few weeks to present the current state of my master’s thesis work, which I was able to turn into a full conference paper. Turns out writing an extended abstract is about as much work as the full paper. But I’m excited with how it turned out!

Oh, and I get to go to Hawaii. That’s pretty cool.

Here’s my abstract from the paper as a PREVIEW… the full paper should be published in a few months. And, if you are going to be at the conference… let me know! Let’s share a coffee!

The abstract:

    An investigation into how atomic oxygen exposure causes silicone to silicate surface glassification to occur in Wacker® RTV-S691 and NuSil CV-2960 silicones was performed using a ground-based laboratory environment and analyzed through optical microscopy over a fluence range of 3.389 ± 0.378 × 10¹⁹ to 1.45 ± 0.047 × 10²¹ atoms/cm². Surface layer conversion in both silicones was observed after being exposed to very low atomic oxygen fluences (F ≈ 3.389 ± 0.378 × 10¹⁹   atoms/cm²), which suggests a possible conversion in low earth orbit (LEO) on the order of 2 to 4 days. The polydimethylsiloxane chains present in both silicone compounds oxidize readily in atomic oxygen and create a glassy surface layer, but while the CV-2960 shows cracks earlier than the RTV-S691, its crack density flattens out with increasing exposure, due to thickening and hardening of islands present in the cracked structure. The RTV-S691 converts more slowly but shows a higher overall crack density with longer exposure times and may not flatten out until the surface is sufficiently saturated with cracks. Surface glassification and silicate layer formation may have an impact on thermal and optical properties of these two silicones, and understanding their behavior under atomic oxygen exposure is important to spacecraft designers when planning missions traversing or operating in the LEO environment.

And yeah, that’s an ASCII image of a Lihue, HI waterfall. Original image credit: Tripster.com