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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
A. H. Seltzman, S. J. Wukitch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 7 | October-November 2021 | Pages 641-646
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1913030
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), also known as selective laser melting, of Glenn Research Copper 84 (GRCop-84), a Cr2Nb (8 at. % Cr, 4 at. % Nb) precipitation-hardened alloy, produces a fully dense, high-conductivity alloy with tensile strength (470-MPa yield and 710-MPa ultimate tensile strength) superior to other competing copper alloys. Agglomeration and coarsening of precipitates in gas atomized GRCop-84 powder occurred above a threshold of 17 μm in diameter. Area of precipitates within cross sections is consistent among powder particles of different diameters indicating a consistent atomization process. Precipitates within gas atomized powder were shown to either melt and subsequently re-precipitate as the melt pool rapidly cools or break apart during LPBF resulting in precipitates smaller than in the initial powder. Precipitate size in powder therefore does not affect precipitate size, and thus tensile strength, in LPBF GRCop-84.