The Well-Dressed Spacecraft: Textiles for Cosmic Dust Metrology

Abstract

I envision cosmic grains that may have traveled light years to meet, in a microscopic blitz, the commonplace textile! This work brings the first electronic textiles to Low Earth Orbit, tracking advanced fabric sensor characterization from a tabletop laser accelerator, to a warehouse-scale electrostatic accelerator, to the walls of the International Space Station.

There is, increasingly, direct place-sharing between the specialized scientist and the lay explorer – a coexistence of scientific and humanistic pursuit that is muted in the specialized laboratories of the 20th century. When scientific and humanistic infrastructure are not gracefully coevolved, they clash. A key design vision for the current work is to propose opportunities exist to more deeply unify the infrastructural demands and desires of the explorer with the architectures that enable scientific inquiry.

For example, for decades, spacecraft and spacesuits have leveraged textile substrates as their outermost protective skins. The primary contribution of this work is the introduction of piezoelectric and charge sensitive fabric skin for sensing hypervelocity space dust, while simultaneously offering enhanced protective capabilities. Dust kinematic estimates can in turn suggest the grain's likely origin. From space webs on asteroids and `sensory conductors' on extravehicular spacesuits to future 'textile telescopes' for sensing interstellar dust, I introduce a suite of additional conceptual avenues that together map out a landscape of opportunity for scientists and explorers alike.