To address the challenges of space environmental effects, NASA designed the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) for an 18-month mission to expose thousands of samples of candidate materials that might be used on a space station or other orbital spacecraft. LDEF was launched in April 1984 and was to have been returned to Earth in 1985. Changes in mission schedules postponed retrieval until January 1990, after 69 months in orbit. Analyses of the samples recovered from LDEF have provided spacecraft designers and managers with the most extensive data base on space materials phenomena. Many LDEF samples were greatly changed by extended space exposure. Among even the most radially altered samples, NASA and its science teams are finding a wealth of surprising conclusions and tantalizing clues about the effects of space on materials. Many were discussed at the first two LDEF results conferences and subsequent professional papers. The LDEF Materials Results for Spacecraft Applications Conference was convened in Huntsville to discuss implications for spacecraft design. Already, paint and thermal blanket selections for space station and other spacecraft have been affected by LDEF data. This volume synopsizes those results.
LDEF Materials Results for Spacecraft Applications: Executive Summary
1995
27 pages
Report
No indication
English
Unmanned Spacecraft , Manned Spacecraft , Materials Degradation & Fouling , Conferences , Environment effects , Long duration exposure facility , Spacecraft construction materials , Aerospace environments , Materials tests , Spaceborne experiments , Spacecraft design , Data bases , Exposure , Information dissemination , Low earth orbits , Paints , Space stations , Technology utilization
LDEF Materials Results for Spacecraft Applications
NTIS | 1993
|LDEF materials results for spacecraft applications
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|LDEF Materials Results for Spacecraft Applications
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|Spacecraft Materials: Comparison Between Flight Results Obtained on LDEF and MIR
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1994
|