DIN EN 16602-70-05:2015-01

One or more of the following organic substances can contaminate spacecraft materials and hardware, as well as vacuum chambers: volatile condensable products of materials out-gassing under vacuum; volatile condensable products of off-gassing materials; back-streaming products from pumping systems; handling residues (such as human grease); residues of cleaning agents; non-filtered external pollution; creep of certain substances (such as silicones). There are several methods for identifying organic species, such as mass spectrometry, gas chromatography and infrared spectroscopy, or a combination of these methods. Infrared spectroscopy, which is the most widely used, is a simple, versatile and rapid technique providing high resolution qualitative and quantitative analyses. The technique is therefore baseline for the present Standard. This standard defines test requirements for detecting organic contamination on surfaces using direct and indirect methods with the aid of infrared spectroscopy. The standard applies to controlling and detecting organic contamination on all manned and unmanned spacecraft, launchers, payloads, experiments, terrestrial vacuum test facilities, and cleanrooms. The following test methods are covered: direct sampling of contaminants; indirect sampling of contaminants by washing and wiping. Several informative annexes are included to give guidelines to the following subjects: qualitative and quantitative interpretation of spectral data; calibration of infrared equipment; training of operators; use of molecular witness plates; collecting molecular contamination; contact test to measure the contamination transfer of materials; immersion test to measure the extractable contamination potential of materials; selection criteria for test equipment. This standard may be tailored for the specific characteristics and constraints of space project in conformance with ECSS-S-ST-00. This document (EN 16602-70-05:2014) has been prepared by Technical Committee CEN/CLC/TC 5 "Space", the secretariat of which is held by DIN (Germany). This document has been developed to cover specifically space systems and has therefore precedence over any European Standard covering the same scope but with a wider domain of applicability (for example: aerospace).