Abstract
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a Sun-observing spacecraft that includes two spectrometers that use aluminum membranes to filter solar radiation. The transmission of those filters degraded by a factor of 5 during the first five years after launch. Previously, we showed that degradation was comparable to that induced in the laboratory by UV synchrotron radiation on similar aluminum filters. Here, we show that a physics-based model fit to the results of our synchrotron exposures can quantitatively describe the SDO degradation if the water vapor pressure \(p\)H2O on the SDO is allowed to be a free parameter. The fitted value of \(p\)H2O for both spectrometers, approximately 10−8 mbar (10\(^{-6}~\text{Pa}\)), is consistent with the flux of outgassed water estimated for the thermal blankets on SDO.
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Acknowledgments
We acknowledge useful discussions with Tom Woods of LASP, Marie Dominique of the Royal Observatory of Belgium, and Nicholas Ritchie, Dale Newbury, John Villarubia, Ed Hagley, Mike Moldover, and Rick Ricker of NIST. We also received help from Don Woodraska and Jacob Sprunck of LASP. We thank Ed Hagley, Alex Farrell, and Mitch Furst (now deceased) for their tireless efforts to maintain and improve SURF.
Funding
As a user facility, SURF (Arp et al., 2011) is funded in part by organizations such as NASA and NOAA. This work was funded in part by NASA contract NNG07HW00C.
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Berg, Tarrio, and Lucatorto contributed concepts to the oxidation model, which Berg implemented. Tarrio used the NIST synchrotron to expose aluminum samples and measure the resulting oxidation. Berg modeled the water outgassing from SDO, while Eparvier and Jones provided the EUV transmission data from SDO. All of the authors contributed to discussions of the model and reviews of the manuscript.
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Berg, R.F., Tarrio, C., Lucatorto, T.B. et al. Oxidation Caused by Water Outgassed from the Thermal Blanket on the SDO Spacecraft. Sol Phys 298, 81 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-023-02148-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-023-02148-z