International Space Exploration Day

Today is International Space Exploration Day. This day commemorates the first manned moon landing (1969) and the first landing of a probe on Mars (1976). At INNOVENT e.V., scientists are also making an important contribution to space exploration by developing innovative PCO® coatings. These coatings ensure that especially optical instruments work well in space under such extreme conditions. Because these functional coatings have low reflectance values, especially on titanium alloys, they have a wide range of applications in space related research projects. For example, they were used in the XMM-Newton, an ESA space observatory, or the titanium housing of the control nozzles of the Ariane 5 rocket.

The effects of space on various organisms were tested in 2008 as part of the ESA project Expose-E. For this project, aluminum parts were treated with the white PCO® coating developed by INNOVENT.

Current projects using the PCO® coating are the well known Solar Orbiter and the SUN RISE III project, which will be launched in 2022. In the case of the Solar Orbiter, the coating developed at INNOVENT ensures that reflections are kept to a minimum. This allows for higher quality images and new insights into our sun.

If you want to learn more about our PCO® coatings, click here.