WEBVTT

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DAISY: Your body is an amazing
thing...

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You can get scraped, cut, or
worse...

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the human body has the ability
to bounce right back...

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other than a little scar
tissue, you are as good as new.

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NASA is designing organic
structural material that has
that same ability.

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NASA’s self healing material is
next...

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On Real World.
[music]

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DAISY: Imagine a military plane
flying a dangerous mission.

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Just a bit of enemy fire could
bring that mission down...

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Or think of a space craft,
exploring new worlds...

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A tiny bit of space debris
could cause the crew to

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explore ways to stay alive,
instead of new frontiers...

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But what if there was a way to
prevent punctures in airplanes
and space craft...

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NASA’s looking at a way, not to
prevent them, but to fix them,
immediately.

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By developing a self healing
material, in a NASA Lab,

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the agency is hoping to negate
some of the biggest

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dangers of air and space
travel.

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MIA SIOCHI: The kind of self
healing material that we’re
looking at is puncture healing.

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DAISY: Mia Siochi is the Acting
Head for the Advanced Materials

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and Processing branch at NASA’s
Langley Research Center.

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MIA: The way we test it is
actually we shoot a bullet
through it.

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And what we’re looking for is
once the bullet penetrates,

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that it will close immediately,
right back behind it.

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What happens is the polymer
inherently flows as the bullet
penetrates.

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And the reason is as the bullet
goes in, it actually

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raises the temperature around
the region where it goes in.

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DAISY: Polymers are substances
made of many small molecules

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joined together to make long
chains. And in a NASA chemistry
lab,

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they have come up with a
polymer that will flow at the

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temperature the structure will
be at as penetration occurs.

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MIA: As the bullet penetrates,
it pulls a little bit of the
material with it.

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But then, as it leaves, then
the material will snap back.

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And when it snaps back, it
actually seals.

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DAISY: This is pretty amazing
stuff...

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it stands up to punctures...
and a whole lot more.

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This is the result...

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You can see where the saw cut
through, but the structural
integrity remains intact.

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MIA: We have looked at this
material for like a fuel tank
application, for example,

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where you shoot at it, and
there’s liquid in a container,

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and it actually works.

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So it was gratifying to see
that when we actually test this
material in the field,

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you can see the bullet
penetrating, here, and the

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material pops out and then goes
back in.

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We’ve done this from the side
and also from the front.

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The camera’s fast enough to
pick up the bullet going
through

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and there’s a shock wave that
accompanies the healing of the
material.

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DAISY: Similar material was
already available...

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Used in golf balls and targets
at shooting ranges,

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it had many of the qualities
scientists were looking for...

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but not all of the qualities...

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KEITH GODON: The material,
surlyn, it’s self healing,

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but one of the properties it
doesn’t have is that it’s not
structural load bearing.

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DAISY: Keith Gordon is a
research materials engineer

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here at NASA Langley Research
Center

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KEITH: What we want to do is we
want to make a material

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that has self healing
properties, but we want to
increase it,

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from the mechanical properties
or the structural load bearing
properties.

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DAISY: So Keith and his
colleagues

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set forth to make a material
that could self heal

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and have the structural
integrity needed for NASA
applications.

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They needed to develop a
material

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that had more tensile strength
than previous self healing
materials.

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Tensile strength is an
important factor

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in determining a material’s
load bearing ability.

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It is a measurement of the
stress at which a material

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breaks or permanently deforms.

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Stress equals load divided by
area.

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And that was just one of the
qualities they had to account
for.

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KEITH: That’s part of the
chemistry, all of the

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brainstorming in terms of the
chemistry involved.

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We need a material that is
easily process-able.

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To make a polymer you have to
start with monomers,

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small molecules, in hopes to
making a large molecule.

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And so what we have here, is we
have the monomers

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dissolving right now, we have
another monomer

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that we’re going to add that’s
going to initiate the reaction.

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What we hope to have after
about 12 hours,

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polymerization time, is a
polymer.

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What we’re going to do from
that point is isolate the
polymer,

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so it’s going to go from a
liquid type of appearance, now,

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to a powder.
We’re going to take the polymer
powder,

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and then we’re going to place
it inside of a mold,

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press it, and we’ll have our 3
x 3 panel.

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DAISY: The work in the lab has
produced a product

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that will be beneficial for
future space exploration.

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MIA: For NASA applications,
what we’re looking at

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is space structures for
example, that self heal.

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Habitats for example and so
what we’re interested in

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is that if there’s an event
where it gets hit by a
micrometeoroid,

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we can retain the pressure in
the habitat.

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And we’ve actually tested this
material at close to
micrometeoroid velocities.

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Up to 5 kilometers per second
and it does close back up.

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DAISY: So work in the lab will
continue, with the goal

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to make NASA’s future space
exploration as safe as it can
be.

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Keep track of this and all of
NASA’s exploration missions at
www.NASA.gov.

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? [music] ?