Ultra-Black Material Finds Use on the International Space Station

NASA has made plans to test the applications of an 'ultra-black' material - a carbon-nanotube coating that absorbs nearly all of the light thrown its way. This could have stunning implications for future orbital telescope technologies, for which stray light can often be a nuisance. 

Nature World News first reported about the debut of a "darker than black" material back in July, when "Vantablack" was presented to the public at the Farnborough International Air Show.

The material was reportedly draped over a bumped surface, and all the crowd reportedly saw was a singular dark shape that bothers the eyes.

"You expect to see the hills and all you can see ... it's like black, like a hole, like there's nothing there. It just looks so strange," Ben Jensen, the chief technical officer behind Vantablack, told The Independent following its debut.

That's because Vantablack is made up of carbon nanotubes - each about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. This structure allows it to absorb all but 0.035 percent of visible light, making it a dark abyss to the human eye, which relies on reflected light to see shape and color.

NASA has now crafted a similar space-ready nanotube-based material to coat a complex, cylindrically-shaped baffle - a component that helps reduce stray light in telescopes.

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) will be testing if the material holds up in space and how effectively it can improve orbital telescope performance.

The material will specifically be used to reduce stray light when observing the Sun, helping to pick up the faint outline of the Sun's outermost corona and study coronal mass ejections (CMEs).

So far, things look good for the coating, according to NASA's Goddard optics engineer John Hagopian, who is leading the technology's advancement.

"The fact the coatings have survived the trip to the space station already has raised the maturity of the technology to a level that qualifies them for flight use," he said in a statement. "In many ways the external exposure of the samples on the space station subjects them to a much harsher environment than components will ever see inside of an instrument."

** Correction** A previous version of this article implied that the material in question was in-fact Vantablack. This is not the case, but it should be noted that the ISS materials function similarly, absorbing 99.5 percent of the light in the ultraviolet and visible and 99.8 percent in infrared bands.