Scuff Plates

The SFU contained four approximately semi-circular scuff plates made from aluminium coated with thermal control paint.  One of these was kept by the manufacturers for their own tests, after it had been found not to contain any impacts.  The other three were brought to the National Aerospace Laboratory for examination.

Only six impacts were found on the three scuff plates, all exhibiting the typical hypervelocity impact features for painted metal targets.  A central crater is observed surrounded by a large spallation region where the paint has been totally removed.

Below are two images of one scuff plate impact, the left one at showing the entire impact at x150 magnification, and the other only the central aluminium pit at x600.  Because of the shallow depth of focus of the zoom lens at high magnifications, the image is focussed only on the crater rim.  Click on either image for the full-size version.
 

SCPL361.1.150
SCPL361.1.600A

You may download a zipped data file (1.7 MB) containing images of all six impacts by clicking here.

Image naming rule:  the scuff plate number is given first, followed by the impact number (1 to 6) and finally the magnification.  For example, in the case given above the impact was found on scuff plate SCPL361, it was the first of the six total impacts found, and the image magnifications were 150 and 600 respectively.  Any letters given after the magnification just give some estra information (maybe two or more images were taken at the same magnification, or we were focussing on some interesting feature).

Owing to the small number of impacts and complicated exposure geometry, no flux data can be obtained for these impact surfaces.


| PLU-1 | PLU-2 | PLU-4 | SPLU-1 | SPLU-2 | BSU-1 |

| BSU-2 | Scuff plates | IRTS | SEM | EFFU | 2DHV | Solar arrays |