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Future Materials Science Research on the International Space Station Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station National Materials Advisory Board Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems National Research Council NMAB-491 NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS Washington, D.C. 1997
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance. This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. William Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an advisor to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. William Wulf are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council. This study by the National Materials Advisory Board was conducted under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project. Available in limited supply from: National Materials Advisory Board 2101 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20418 202-334-3505 nmab@nas.edu Additional copies are available for sale from: National Academy Press Box 285 2101 Constitution Ave., N.W. Washington, DC 20055 800-624-6242 202-334-3313 (in the Washington Metropolitan Area) http://www.nap.edu Copyright 1997 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. International Standard Book Number 0-309-05979-8 Printed in the United States of America.
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Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station JULIA R. WEERTMAN (chair), Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois REZA ABBASCHIAN, University of Florida, Gainesville I. MELVIN BERNSTEIN, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts MARTIN E. GLICKSMAN, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York JOHN H. HOPPS, JR., Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia SYLVIA M. JOHNSON, SRI International, Menlo Park, California RALPH G. NUZZO, University of Illinois at Urbana, Urbana, Illinois MORTON B. PANISH, AT&T Bell Laboratories (retired), Murray Hill, New Jersey JAMES W. WAGNER, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland NMAB Staff ROBERT M. EHRENREICH, Senior Program Manager BONNIE A. SCARBOROUGH, Research Associate PAT WILLIAMS, Senior Project Assistant Liaisons ROBERT O. McBRAYER, George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, NASA, Huntsville, Alabama MICHAEL J. WARGO, NASA, Washington, D.C.
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National Materials Advisory Board ROBERT A. LAUDISE (chair), Lucent Technologies, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey REZA ABBASCHIAN, University of Florida, Gainesville JAN D. ACHENBACH, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois MICHAEL I. BASKES, Sandia-Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California JESSE (JACK) BEAUCHAMP, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena FRANCIS DISALVO, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York EDWARD C. DOWLING, Cyprus AMAX Minerals Company, Englewood, Colorado ANTHONY G. EVANS, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts JOHN A.S. GREEN, The Aluminum Association, Inc., Washington, D.C. JOHN H. HOPPS, JR., Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia MICHAEL JAFFEE, Hoechst Celanese Research Division, Summit, New Jersey SYLVIA M. JOHNSON, SRI International, Menlo Park, California LIONEL C. KIMERLING, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge HARRY LIPSITT, Wright State University, Yellow Springs, Ohio RICHARD S. MULLER, University of California, Berkeley ELSA REICHMANIS, Lucent Technologies, Inc., Murray Hill, New Jersey KENNETH L. REIFSNIDER, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg EDGAR A. STARKE, University of Virginia, Charlottesville KATHLEEN C. TAYLOR, General Motors Corporation, Warren, Michigan JAMES WAGNER, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland JOSEPH WIRTH, Raychem Corporation, Menlo Park, California BILL G.W. YEE, Pratt & Whitney, West Palm Beach, Florida ROBERT E. SCHAFRIK, Director
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Acknowledgments The committee would like to thank Carolyn Griner and Joel K. Kearns of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center for their support of this project and Michael J. Wargo of NASA Headquarters and Robert O. McBrayer of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center for ensuring that the committee had prompt access to all of the information it required. The committee would also like to thank Frank R. Szofran, Helen L. Grant, Donald Gilles, Sharon D. Cobb, Tom Turner, Myscha Crouch, and Charlie Walker of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, who provided comprehensive briefings and valuable insight into the history and development of NASA's Microgravity Materials Science Program and Space Station Furnace Facility. Thanks are also due to Candace J. Quinn of Corning Incorporated for her help with this study. The committee also thanks the staff of the National Materials Advisory Board, particularly Robert M. Ehrenreich, senior program manager, Pat Williams, senior project assistant, and Bonnie A. Scarborough, research associate. Finally, the chair of the committee thanks the committee members for their dedication and patience during the course of this study. This report could not have been completed without their diligence and goodwill.
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Preface
The deployment of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) Core, which was originally scheduled for June 1999, has been delayed until November 2002 because of revisions in the construction schedule of the International Space Station (ISS). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is attempting to capitalize on this delay by reviewing the SSFF Core project with respect to the specific research capabilities afforded by the facility, the technology being developed and its usefulness to the U.S. materials science community, and the procedures for identifying the research to be conducted using the SSFF Core.
To facilitate its review, NASA requested that the National Research Council conduct a study to (1) examine NASA's research plan for high-temperature microgravity materials science; (2) assess the ability of the current SSFF Core concept to support the range of high-temperature experiments and associated specialized furnaces; (3) evaluate the usefulness of the high-temperature microgravity materials-science projects planned and technology developed to the research and industrial materials-science communities in terms of already identified needs and planned activities through the year 2010; (4) assess the ability of NASA's high-temperature microgravity materials-science plan to respond to evolving interests and priorities in the field of materials science; and (5) examine the procedures used by NASA to select experiments for the ISS and determine if they encourage active participation by the broader materials-science research community.
The Committee on Materials Science Research on the International Space Station was convened under the auspices of the National Materials Advisory Board to conduct this study and write this report. Because of the limited time allotted the study process, the committee worked on the assumption that NASA's microgravity materials research
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program would continue unabated into the foreseeable future. The committee therefore focused on the fundamental aspects of the project: the ability and flexibility of the current SSFF Core concept and the NASA selection process to identify and support research in the expansive and evolving field of materials science and engineering. No effort was made to evaluate current or previous research projects.
The nine committee members for this study were carefully selected to provide a suitable range of expertise and an appropriate balance of experience in microgravity research. Committee members included experts in solidification science, semiconductor materials, metals and alloys, ceramics, glasses, polymers, and biomaterials. To provide the committee with insight into the advantages and difficulties of conducting microgravity research, two members were actively involved in microgravity research programs with the Marshall Space Flight Center, and three were members of previous National Research Council committees on microgravity materials research. To ensure a balanced assessment, five of the committee members had no previous experience in the field and were selected solely for their reputations as materials scientists.
In order to accomplish its task, the committee collected information from four main sources:
extensive briefings from the technical staff of the Marshall Space Flight Center on (1) the microgravity materials-science solicitation and selection process, (2) the history of the microgravity materials-science program, (3) the development of the systems science requirements for the SSFF Core, (4) the ISS candidate investigations for the microgravity materials-science program, and (5) the current SSFF Core concept
a site visit to the SSFF Core development facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama
a wide range of NASA and National Research Council publications on NASA's microgravity research program, including (1) NASA's Research Announcement for Research and Flight Experiment Opportunities (issued December 4, 1996), (2) NASA's SSFF Core Systems Science Requirements Envelope Document, (3) NASA's SSFF Core Experiment Module Accommodations Handbook, (4) NASA's SSFF Core Science Working Group Meeting Minutes , (5) NASA's Microgravity Science and Applications Program Tasks and Bibliography for Fiscal Year 1996, and (6) the
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National Research Council's Microgravity Research Opportunities for the 1990s report • the 13 research projects that were recently selected from responses to the 1991 and 1994 NASA Research Announcements, which the committee considered a representative sample of the research to be conducted throughout the lifetime of the SSFF Core (i.e., through 2010) NASA also supports some in-house research and experiments through the University Space Research Association, but these projects follow a separate funding process and were not reviewed for this report. The committee's deliberations are organized into three chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the background information for this study, including the reasons for conducting microgravity research and the capabilities of the current SSFF Core concept. Chapter 2 reviews NASA's microgravity research selection process and its ability to ensure that the research projects selected and conducted are of the highest-quality. Chapter 3 discusses (1) the relevance of microgravity research to the study of metals, semiconductors, ceramics and glasses, polymers, and biomaterials and (2) the ability of the current SSFF Core concept to support these important areas of materials-science research. JULIA R. WEERTMAN CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON MATERIALS SCIENCE RESEARCH ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION
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Contents Executive Summary 1 1 Microgravity Research and the Space Station Furnace Facility Core 13 NASA's Microgravity Materials-Science Research Program, 13 Space Station Furnace Facility Core Capability, 16 2 NASA'S Microgravity Research Solicitation and Selection Processes 21 Overview, 21 Inventory of Research Projects, 24 3 Ability of the Space Station Furnace Facility Core to Support Materials Science Experiments That Require a Microgravity Environment 29 Metals and Alloys, 31 Semiconductors, 34 Ceramics and Glass, 37 Polymeric Materials, 41 Conclusions and Recommendations, 43 References 47 Acronyms 51 Appendices A Summary of Space Station Furnace Facility Core Systems Science Requirements 55 B Biographical Sketches of Committee Members 57
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Figures and Tables
FIGURES
1–1
Schematic illustration of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) Core with experiment modules,
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1–2
Schematic illustration of the Space Station Furnace Facility (SSFF) Core without experiment modules,
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TABLES
2-1
Expertise of Materials Science Microgravity Principal Investigators in 1997,
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3-1
Principal Investigators, Affiliations, and Program Titles for the Research Projects Selected in Response to 1991 and 1994 NRAs,
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