Columbia Houston we have a tally ho on l
def called the long-duration exposure
facility this 11-ton satellite had been
in space for almost six years when a
shovel frugal tree dipped and profits
safely back to her prey touchdown or go
home after delivery to the Kennedy Space
Center in several months of close
inspection l dev became an empty shell
it's 57 external experiments were
shipped to scientists around the globe
including a group at NASA's Langley
Research Center in Virginia the effects
of long-term exposure to space can be
seen in this materials and coatings
experiment according to Wayne schlampe a
senior engineer at Langley the various
colorations and striping is evident on
the surfaces here we're not present when
L death was put in the world in fact the
top of this panel looked exactly like
its unexposed underside prior to the
journey the goal is to determine the
significance of these changes so that
future spacecraft and structures can be
built with the best possible materials
Don Humes a Langley aerospace
technologist had 22 aluminum panels
positioned around
their mission was simple be struck by
micro meteoroids another man-made debris
determining how many particles are out
there where they are and what they're
made of is critical in designing future
protection for astronauts and spacecraft
research scientist Gale Harvey is
discovering the de thermal control paint
used almost universally on spacecraft
can contaminate optical materials this
unexpected brown staining will almost
certainly result in an across-the-board
change in surface coatings for space
applications learning more about cosmic
rays as the goal of an l def experiment
at the naval research lab in Washington
DC according to physicist Jim Adams
cosmic rays are fast-moving particles
that can penetrate human skin and
disrupt onboard computers another factor
to be considered in developing future
space hardware technologically what will
come out of L death is a set of
handbooks which will be the Bible for
how spacecraft are built for the next 20
or 30 years I think would be a very long
time before there's an opportunity to
fly such a large spacecraft for such a
long time and learn so much about the
effects of the space environment more
than 12 million tomato seeds carried on
Al def have been distributed to students
of all ages around the country
the majority of the plants eventually
produced my way through and the second
generation mistake in addition to
providing valuable information about the
effects of space on living matter the
scenes project is designed to excite
young people about science the
long-duration exposure facility six
years of unparalleled information
extending our future capabilities in
space