Assessment of Thermal Control and Protective Coatings

This final report is concerned with the tasks performed during the contract period which included spacecraft coating development, testing, and applications. Five marker coatings consisting of a bright yellow handrail coating, protective overcoat for ceramic coatings, and specialized primers for composites (or polymer) surfaces were developed and commercialized by AZ Technology during this program. Most of the coatings have passed space environmental stability requirements via ground tests and/or flight verification. Marker coatings and protective overcoats were successfully flown on the Passive Optical Sample Assembly (POSA) and the Optical Properties Monitor (OPM) experiments flown on the Russian space station MIR. To date, most of the coatings developed and/or modified during this program have been utilized on the International Space Station and other spacecraft. For ISS, AZ Technology manufactured the 'UNITY' emblem now being flown on the NASA UNITY node (Node 1) that is docked to the Russian Zarya (FGB) utilizing the colored marker coatings (white, blue, red) developed by AZ Technology. The UNITY emblem included the US American flag, the Unity logo, and NASA logo on a white background, applied to a Beta cloth substrate.