NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility, or LDEF (acronym pronounced "EL-deaf"), was a school bus-sized cylindrical facility designed to provide long-term experimental data on the outer space environment and its effects on space systems, materials, operations and selected spore's survival. It was placed in low Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. The original plan called for the LDEF to be retrieved in March 1985, but after a series of delays it was eventually returned to Earth by Columbia in January 1990.
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| - Long Duration Exposure Facility
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| - NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility, or LDEF (acronym pronounced "EL-deaf"), was a school bus-sized cylindrical facility designed to provide long-term experimental data on the outer space environment and its effects on space systems, materials, operations and selected spore's survival. It was placed in low Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. The original plan called for the LDEF to be retrieved in March 1985, but after a series of delays it was eventually returned to Earth by Columbia in January 1990.
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| - Long Duration Exposure Facility
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| - LDEF is removed from Columbia's payload bay
- Columbia arrives at Kennedy Space Center with LDEF still in its payload bay.
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| - LDEF, shortly before deployment, flies on the RMS arm of over Baja California.
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| - LDEF Return to KSC - GPN-2000-000676.jpg
- STS-32 Return to KSC - GPN-2000-000677.jpg
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abstract
| - NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility, or LDEF (acronym pronounced "EL-deaf"), was a school bus-sized cylindrical facility designed to provide long-term experimental data on the outer space environment and its effects on space systems, materials, operations and selected spore's survival. It was placed in low Earth orbit by Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. The original plan called for the LDEF to be retrieved in March 1985, but after a series of delays it was eventually returned to Earth by Columbia in January 1990. It successfully carried science and technology experiments for about 5.7 years, that have revealed a broad and detailed collection of space environmental data. LDEF's 69 months in space provided scientific data on the long-term effects of space exposure on materials, components and systems that has benefited NASA spacecraft designers to this day.
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