Atomic oxygen, a corrosive space gas, finds many applications on
Earth. An Atomic Innovation for Artwork Oxygen may be one of the
most common substances on the planet, but recent space research
has unveiled a surprising number of new applications for the
gas, including restoring damaged artwork. It all started with a
critical problem facing would-be spacecraft: the gasses just
outside the Earth’s atmosphere are highly corrosive. While most
oxygen atoms on Earth’s surface occur in pairs, in space the
pair is often split apart by short-wave solar radiation,
producing singular atoms. Because oxygen so easily bonds with
other substances, it is highly corrosive in atomic form, and it
gradually wears away the protective layering on orbiting objects
such as satellites and the International Space Station (ISS). To
combat this destructive gas, NASA recreated it on Earth and
applied it to different materials to see what would prove most
resistant. The coatings developed through these experiments are
currently used on t