Re: Visual color of satellite

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Kevin Fetter wrote:
> 
> The lacrosse military satellites and the ERBS satellite are known to have a
> red colour when observed.
> 
>[TLEs removed]
> The colour is due to a gold looking material on the satellites
> 
> Click on the below link to be taken to a site which shows a lacrosse
> satellite and you will notice the gold looking material.
>
> http://www2.satellite.eu.org/p_chien.html

A popular material on sats is Kapton, a polyimide material used for
thermal blanketing. Quite temperature-resistant. It's a yellow-orange
sheet. It also suffers erosion by atomic oxygen in low earth orbit,
something I was briefly involved in studying a few years back.

The Lacrosse photo sure looks like Kapton.

Best, Mark

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