The Physical Vapor Transport of Organic Solids (PVTOS-2) experiment, a joint project of NASA's Office of Commercial Programs (OCP) and the 3M Company, was successfully flown in the Orbiter middeck on the STS-26 (Discovery, OV-103) Mission. STS-26 was launched on Thursday, September 29, 1988, at 11:37 a.m. EDT and after 4 days of on-orbit operations, landed at Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB) at 12:37 p.m. EDT on Monday, October 3, 1988. The PVTOS Experiment Apparatus Container and Generic Electronics Module control and data acquisition computer in the middeck of STS-26 are shown. Initial payload preparations took place at the 3M laboratories in St. Paul, Minnesota over a period of 3 months before the flight. During this time, the nine samples of copper phthalocyanine were loaded into glass ampoules and sealed. The ampoules were installed in the vacuum housing cell and the proper vacuum conditions established. The level of vacuum is important in establishing the thermal boundary conditions for the vapor transport process which takes place inside the ampoule. The cells were then installed in the Experiment Apparatus Container, tested, and readied for shipment to Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The 3M research team arrived at KSC on September 19th and spent the next week performing final inspection and checkout of the experiment. The payload was installed into the Orbiter middeck on September 26th at 10:30 p.m. EDT. Once on orbit, the nine PVTOS samples were processed in five experiment runs. Four of these runs processed two samples sequentially for 4 hours each. The ninth sample was processed alone, also for 4 hours. This led to a cumulative sample run time of 36 hours. PVTOS operations went extremely well during the flight.


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    Title :

    Post Launch Mission Operation Report for STS-26 Physical Vapor Transport of Organic Solids (PVTOS-2) Experiment


    Publication date :

    1988


    Size :

    4 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English