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An experiment designed to measure the atomic oxygen (AO) erosion profile of scattered AO was exposed to Low Earth Orbital (LEO) AO for almost four years as part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment 1 and 2 (MISSE 1 and 2)
The experiment was flown in MISSE Passive Experiment Carrier 2 (PEC 2), Tray 1, attached to the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) Quest Airlock. The experiment consisted of an aperture disk lid of Kapton H (DuPont) polyimide coated on the space exposed surface with a thin AO durable silicon dioxide film. The aperture lid had a small hole in its center to allow AO to enter into a chamber and impact a base disk of aluminum. The AO that scattered from the aluminum base could react with the under side of the aperture lid which was coated sporadically with microscopic sodium chloride particles. Scattered AO erosion can occur to materials within a spacecraft that are protected from direct AO attack but because of apertures in the spacecraft the AO can attack the interior materials after scattering. The erosion of the underside of the Kapton lid was sufficient to be able to use profilometry to measure the height of the buttes that remained after washing off the salt particles. The erosion pattern indicated that peak flux of scattered AO occurred at and angle of approximately 45 from the incoming normal incidence on the aluminum base unlike the erosion pattern predicted for scattering based on Monte Carlo computational predictions for AO scattering from Kapton H polyimide. The effective erosion yield for the scattered AO was found to be a factor of 0.214 of that for direct impingement on Kapton H polyimide.
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