High Performance Lubricants in Dubai used in space lubricate ball bearings, gear engine oils, sliding bearings, latches, cables and other mechanisms, and are often subject to extreme conditions for long periods of time. Therefore, space greases require very specific properties to perform reliably.
Space is generally described as a vacuum. That means there’s no atmosphere. There is no air or water flowing to provide cooling. We’ve got evaporation issues. You put certain liquids in a vacuum, they’re going to boil away. So we have tribology problems because of the vacuum of space. We’ve got extreme cold in space, Technolubeuae said, Industrial oils and greases to get a lot thicker. We have flow and shear problems. In space, we also have limited horsepower of our drive motors, so if a lubricant gets too stiff, then limited drive power becomes a real issue.
Moving to the other extreme, temperatures in certain space applications can be quite high. This can occur in situations in which the lube and the mechanism lubricated are exposed to the exhaust of a rocket engine, or a mechanism is pointed toward the sun at all hours of the day. [Heat] can cause oil separation from biggest grease exporter, as well as migration and degradation, said Technolubeuae.
Other difficulties lubricants face in space applications are X-rays and ultraviolet radiation from the sun, as well as severe launch vibes, which are vibrations of rockets that rattle the delicate mechanisms, bearings and gears in spacecraft. On planetary surfaces such as Mars or the moon, dust is an issue because it can easily contaminate mechanisms and lubricants. Another roadblock is that you really can’t send people out there to change the grease or change the oil in your mechanism. There is little opportunity for replenishment, so everything kind of has to be lube-for-life.
Commercial lubricants provide you the best average engine oils. However, the problems tribologists encounter in space applications are similar to the problems that exist on earth. According to Technolubeuae, normal oils in space applications can fail when the wrong lubricant is selected, the designers of the equipment do not fully understand the operating conditions loads, speeds and temperatures that equipment will face, and when the wrong engineering solutions are chosen for problems with lubricated parts.
