Abstract
A spacecraft in near-Earth orbit isexposed to extreme environmental factors, such as highvacuum, zero gravity, collisions with meteors and orbitaldebris, corpuscular and electromagnetic radiations, etc.These factors result in changing properties of spacecraftsurfaces which leads to changes in mechanical, optical,electrical and physical properties of materials andelements of spacecrafts. This paper presents experimentaldata obtained from ground-based photometricobservations of several geostationary satellites (GSS) builton different types of buses, starting from the beginning oftheir operational lives and during several years after theirlaunches. It has been experimentally proved that spectralreflectance properties of the satellite surface materialsundergo gradual degradation with time of the satellite’sstay in space. Noticeable changes in spectral reflectanceproperties of GSS make it possible to detect damages tothe satellite external payload. Comparison of changes inthe reflective characteristics of different platforms overtime can show the level of technical and scientificprogress of spacecraft designers
Published Version
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