Euro Material Ageing – Ground-based testing and selection of the ESA flight candidate materials

Abstract

One of the newest European additions to the International Space Station (ISS) is the Airbus Bartolomeo payload hosting platform, attached externally to the European Columbus Module. This will provide an unobstructed access to the external space environment offering research opportunities for a wide range of space science applications. One of the Bartolomeo missions under development is Euro Material Ageing (EMA) – a joint collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the French Space Agency (CNES). ESA is using the Bartolomeo platform as a testing opportunity to perform materials science research and calibrate its ground-based testing facilities against the real space environment. Additionally, it offers a unique opportunity to small space players of the European market for direct in-flight technology validation.