ThispublicationpresentstheproceedingsofICPMSE-7,theSeventhInternational Conference on Protection of Materials and Structures from Space Environment, held in Toronto May 10–13, 2004. The ICPMSE series of meetings became an important part of the LEO space communitysinceitwasstartedin1991.Sincethen,themeetinghasgrownsteadily, establishing itself as the only North American event covering the various aspects of materials protection in LEO and attracting a large number of engineers, - searchers, managers, and scientists from industrial companies, scienti?c insti- tionsandgovernmentagenciesinCanada,USA,Asia,andEurope,thusbecoming a true international event. The ICPMSE-7 meeting continued the tradition of the previous meetings including in the program the topics on protection of materials in GEO and Deep Space. The conference was organized by Integrity Testing Laboratory Inc. (ITL), and hosted by the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). The meeting was sponsored by: a) The Materials and Manufacturing Ontario (MMO) and the CRESTech, two Ontario Centres of Excellence that from April 1, 2004 joined under the - tario Centres of Excellence Inc. (OCE Inc) a not-for-pro?t, member-based corporation dedicated to establishing Ontario as the place to be for innovation; b) MD Robotics; c) The Integrity Testing Laboratory (ITL) and d) The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). Over 80 people from countries covering the American, European and Asian continents registered for the conference representing the major space agencies and the major companies, institutions and government organizations involved in space activities, indicating a further increase in international co-operation in this critical area of protection of materials inspace.
The goals of the ICPMSE-7 meeting, as in the past years, are to facilitate exchanges between members of the various engineering disciplines involved in development of space materials, including such aspects as environmental hazards of Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Deep Space, ground-based qualification, and in-flight experiments and lessons learned from operational vehicles.
The book continues to discuss topics started in the earlier publications and adds new data and results.
The proceedings cover a range of inter-disciplinary topics concerning the protection of materials and structures in space and discussing the effects of the aggressive LEO as well as the GEO and Deep Space environments on materials and structures and the ways to predict and reduce these effects in short and long-term space missions.
The book is targeting organizations and individuals involved with space material selction, their reliability and influence of space environmental effects on materials and structures.
