Retired since mid 2011 and occasionally acting as consultant materials and processes at European Space Agency.
Dr. Antonius de Rooij started working in 1982 as principle metallurgist in the Materials and Processes Section at the European Space Agency-ESTEC. From 2001 Dr. Antonius de Rooij
was Head of the Materials Technology Section.
This section included one of the largest metallurgy laboratories in Europe and was responsible among others for failure analysis, process qualifications, corrosion testing, microscopy (optical, sem, sam, confocal), surface analysis, material selection, mechanical and thermal testing, x-ray diffraction and advice, etc.
Dr. Antonius de Rooij supported all ESA space projects, including telecommunications satellites, space science and the manned Spacelab, Columbus and ISS.
He was M&P representative in Material Review Boards (MRB), Failure Review Boards (FRB), Design Reviews (PDR, CDR), Acceptance Reviews (FAR). He provided expertise corrosion (general and specifically galvanic corrosion and atomic oxygen) and failure analysis on projects such as Ariane 5,
Vega, ATV and Planck and was the document focal point for the ECSS-Q-ST-70 series of standards, which comprises 38 different standards.
He was also the convenor of the ECSS-Q-ST-70C level II and ECSS-Q-ST-70-71C level III standard. He developed the ESA DMPL tool software
for controlling and approval of the declared materials, parts and processes list according to ECSS-Q-ST-70C. He was also the initiator of
the European Space Materials Database and webmaster of the ESMAT website. Both cover the materials and processes used on spacecraft, launchers, payloads and
ground support equipment.
Materials and Processes course on the basis of ECSS(European Cooperation of Space Standardization).
The first course was given at the
ETH Zurich on the 2nd of September 2014. The 2nd course was given in ESTEC, The Netherlands, on 06-10-2015. The 3rd course was given in ESTEC, The Netherlands, on 30-06-2016. In 2017 the sessions will be on the 21st of June in ESTEC. Goto the M & P courses page for download.
Dr. Antonius de Rooij published around 50 articles in the open literature, contributed to the Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering (John Wiley & Sons)
(corrosion in space),
was invited speaker and chairman on several conferences and gave lessons learned presentations on welding of titanium.
Currently acting as M&P responsible for a part of the service module of the Ariel spacecraft on behalf of Alter Technology
