Large-area electronic skins in space: vision and preflight characterization for first aerospace piezoelectric e-textile

Aerospace-grade textiles have decades of flight heritage for protection against harsh elements of the space environment. However, these substrates have remained electrically passive despite occupying useful large-area real-estate on the exterior walls of persistent spacecraft. By leveraging electronic textiles in an aerospace context, hybrid fabrics can be developed that simultaneously protect spacecraft while also detecting debris or micrometeoroid hypervelocity impactors. Specifically, this paper describes prototype development and preflight testing of piezoelectric Beta cloth ahead of a scheduled late 2020 material resiliency test on the International Space Station. Two accessible manufacturing methods for piezoelectric fiber are introduced based on modifications to piezoelectric cable that reduce diameter, increase mechanical flexibility of the fiber, and improve compatibility with textile weft insertion techniques. A Beta cloth simulant with piezoelectric fiber is introduced and custom ultra low power readout electronics are specified, which allow for a first-order power consumption estimate for scaling of this material across large-area spacecraft walls. Finally, high-velocity impact sensor data measured using the Laser Induced Particle Impact Test (LIPIT) facility is presented, building towards an accurate prediction of impactor velocity.