Long Duration Exposure Facility

Author(s): DaveBowman2001

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NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), 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 spores' 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

NOTES:

• Requires the Space Shuttle and SolarMax addons installed for this addon to work
• Shuttle missions, STS-41-C and STS-32, will be modified by this addon upon installation

LDEF during its deployment from STS-41-C (Challenger, above) in 1984, and its retrieval by STS-32 (Columbia, below) in 1990

LDEF being removed from Columbia's cargo bay after returning to Earth

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