“Graphene’s usefulness on Earth has already been established in the last decade. It is now an opportune time to expand its prospects for use in space applications - an area touted as being the most challenging to modern technology - and shift the paradigm of materials science. Space is the final frontier for graphene research, and I believe this is the first time that graphene has entered the stratosphere,” said project leader Professor Antonio Castro Neto, Director of NUS CA2DM.
To put graphene’s versatility to the test, a team led by Professor Barbaros Özyilmaz, Head of Graphene Research at NUS CA2DM, prepared the material by coating a substrate with a single layer of graphene which was about 0.5 nanometers thick, over 200 times thinner than a strand of human hair. The sample was securely assembled within a Boreal Space ‘Wayfinder - Mini’ CubeSat, and placed in the payload enclosure of the sounding rocket.
In addition to the NUS graphene experiment, the Boreal Space ‘Wayfinder - Mini’ CubeSat also hosted Gallium Nitride magnetic field sensors provided by Stanford University’s Extreme Environments Lab (XLab). The Stanford team is looking not only to obtain important experimental data such as launch load survival and electronics signal integrity, but also insights into magnetic interference, noise reduction and radiation effects on their sensors.