Novel Coating Concepts for Lunar Regolith Dust Mitigation for Thermal Radiators and Extreme Environments

This proposal is to fulfill the technology gap and provide affordable options for durable, stable thermal control material systems (TCMS) based coatings that can be dust shedding in charging environments and can furthermore can survive and operate in extreme environments. The recent efforts at AMSENG for the TCMS for the Lunar Applications indicated that the Charge Dissipating TCMS based on the secondary emission engineering are the promising concepts. It concluded that the coatings have very low dust sticking ability to the lunar simulant dust. The suggested phase I proposal is for extending this work towards affordable coatings for the extreme environments. The involved nano engineered material technologies at AMSENG are: Nano Engineered filled PDMS, the Carborane Siloxane Monomer based cross linkers and primers; along with the Pigments: PBTtrade;, the Doped Zn:beta;LiAGOtrade; and the IRamp;D based Rad Hard Cementatious Inorganic Sols to be cured above RT to lt;100deg;C. Thus, the proposed efforts can address the feasibility evaluation of the advanced dust shedding TCMS coatings for the Lunar Extreme Environments. Thus, the proposed feasibility evaluation efforts can address the Novel Affordable dust shedding TCMS coatings products for the Lunar Extreme Environments through:Process Ultra low outgassingnbsp; space stable filled PDMS with Carborane-Siloxane based cross linkers and Primers, nano engineered filled Elastomers with PBTtrade;, BNNMtrade; andnbsp; Doped Zn:beta;LiAGOtrade;Process Selected Pigments with New Rad Hard Cementatious Sol concepts and define Processing window for each concept compositionProvide the feasibility data for the Dust Shedding TCMS coatings concepts for Thermal Control for harsh extreme environmentsEvaluation and selection of low cost coating processing options, with feasibility proof through GEO simulation, and Dust SimulationRecommend Qualification and Validation efforts for the Reliable Material Systems and processing options for Extreme Environment Lunar Mission hardware