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    ESA > Our Activities > Human Spaceflight > Human Spaceflight Research

    DESC - Organics under Simulated Interstellar Conditions (OSIC)

    The setup consists of an octagonal vacuum chamber evacuated by a pumping system equipped with a cold trap. A rotatable (infrared transparent) CsI substrate is thermally connected to a closed cycle helium refrigerator and suspended in the center of the vacuum chamber. The substrate can be rotated to face alternatively;

    1. The deposition system consisting of a gas inlet tube and a sublimation oven operating at a maximum temperature of 825 Kelvin.
    2. A hydrogen flow UV lamp connected to a microwave generator that produces Lyman alpha photons with energy of 10.6 eV.
    3. A Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer with a spectral range of 6000-400 cm-1.

    Facility characteristics:

    • Stainless steel vacuum system and sealed with aluminum and rubber O-rings.
    • A diffusion pump and rotary roughing pump are mounted on the setup, separated by a liquid nitrogen cold trap.
    • System pressure at room temperature is 4.0-5.0 * 10-8 mbar.
    • Four ports in the vacuum chamber, 2 ports are sealed with infrared transparent KBr windows, 1 port is sealed with UV transparent MgF2 and 1 port is equipped with a sublimation oven.
    • The substrate holder is thermally connected to the cold tip of the closed-cycle helium refrigerator and can be fitted with CsI, Aluminum and IR fused silica substrate disks.
    • The temperature of the closed cycle Helium refrigerator system can be set to any value in the interval between 12 - 273 Kelvin, resolution of 1 Kelvin.
    • To control the matrix to sample ratio, a flow valve is mounted on the gas inlet port.
    • The hydrogen discharge lamp emits a flux of 1 * 1015 photons.cm-2.s-1 of photons with energy ~ 10.6 eV.
    • A narrow quartz tube is filled with organic sample and mounted in the sublimation oven.
    • The sublimation device allows selectable temperatures between room temperature and 550 degrees Celsius with a resolution of approximately 2 degrees Celsius.
    • A thermocouple for temperature reading is fitted inside the sublimation device at the level of the quartz sample tube.

    Last update: 23 January 2012

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