Space Inflatables

Podcast

Space Inflatables

Transcript

Blowing up a telescope in space. I'm Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

The Hubble Space telescope has given astronomers an amazing window into our universe. An even bigger window could be opened by constructing even bigger telescopes. But how can scientists do that without an equally large cost?

One way could be to make an inflatable telescope. This according to Greg Hickey, manager of the Gossamer Systems Group at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

Hickey:
An inflatable structure in space is literally that. It is pressurized through a low-pressure gas to expand it to its shape, just as a balloon expands on Earth.

He and his group, along with their partners around the country, are also developing ways to make these structures rigid once they're in orbit.

Hickey:
We've looked at various means of rigidization, ranging from using the solar energy from the sun to provide curing. We've looked at technologies for rigidization where the object would get cold and provide thermal stability that way.

Hickey says their light weight makes inflatables cheap to launch. And since they deploy themselves without the help of robots or astronauts, they're also much easier to build. For the American Association For The Advancement of Science, I'm Bob Hirshon.

Making Sense of the Research

The important part of the telescope is the reflective surface, the part that does all the work in collecting light from the cosmos. Despite the fact that this reflector can be very thin and lightweight, even modern telescopes require hundreds of kilos of steel and glass to support it. While these rigid materials are required on earth, in microgravity a tubular gas-filled spar can offer the same support. These inflatable structures are ten times less expensive, can be tightly packed in small canisters, be of lower mass, and launched on smaller, cheaper rockets. As you just learned, NASA is developing technologies for the rigidization of these structures, so that there's no need to maintain the pressure of these systems once they are expanded and deployed. The hope is that these inflatable structures might last from 5 to 20 years in a space environment.

Future work is needed to improve prospective materials, but there seems to be no limit to the range of inflatable equipment that could be available in the future. Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory suggest that "solar-powered sails thinner than human hair for propelling spacecraft to the stars; sunshades the size of a soccer field; small flexible devices that make cellular phones obsolete; inflatable habitats for the moon or Mars" are all possible.

Now try to answer the following questions:

1. What are some of the benefits of using inflatable structures in space?
2. What are some of the methods of rigidization that scientists are exploring?
   
3. How does the inflatable telescope work?
4. What remain the biggest challenges to developing these inflatable structures?
5. What other types of inflatable structures are under development?
6. What other uses of Electroactive Polymers are researchers exploring?

Going Further

To learn more about polymers and the use of inflatables in exploring space, visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website. For an extensive report related to the use of inflatables, read the PDF file entitled Electroactive Polymers as Artificial Muscles - Capabilities, Potentials and Challenges. The second page of this report includes a photograph of the inflatable telescope.

For more on how the inflatable telescope works, go to Inflatable Space Telescope to Best Hubble from How Stuff Works.

To learn more about the Hubble Space Telescope, go to Hubble Primer from the Space Telescope Science Institute website. Here you can view a collection of Hubble's Movies and Animations. Also available is a short lesson entitled Is that what they really look like? in which students analyze the images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

For a follow up lesson for grades 6-8, go to the Science NetLinks lesson entitled Exploring the Solar System. In this lesson, students investigate a planet and create a proposal for a trip to their assigned planet. Students use what they have discovered through research to argue for or against planning a trip to the planet. For those planets that would not appear to sustain life, groups must be creative in trying to find a way to explore the planet, such as landing on one of the planet's moons, putting a space station to orbit the planet, or sending a robotic spacecraft.