LDEF archival system plan

The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) has provided the first significant opportunity to extensively study the space environment and its effects upon spacecraft systems and materials. The long-term value of the data obtained from LDEF, which is applicable to a wide range of areas including space environment definition, space environmental effects, and spacecraft design, will depend upon the system developed to archive and retrieve the data. Therefore, in addition to the large effort undertaken to analyze LDEF data, a substantial effort is also necessary in order to retain and disseminate LDEF resources for future research and design. W. J. Schafer Associates, Inc., has a task subcontract to develop the LDEF archival system. The LDEF resources include data, hardware, photographic records, and publications which cover the 20-year history of LDEF from concept design through data analysis. Chronologically, prelaunch resources include documentation of facility and experiment development, testing integration, and operation. Post-retrieval resources are the observations, testing, analysis, and publications since the January 1990 retrieval of LDEF. A third set of resources is the experiment and facility hardware and specimens, including more than 10,000 test specimens flown on LDEF and subsequently divided and distributed among investigators at numerous laboratories. Many valuable science and technology investigations were undertaken with LDEF experiments and hardware, and many more investigations are being identified in areas not yet explored. LDEF data applications encompass primarily low-Earth orbit spacecraft and structures. The nearly six-year space exposure of LDEF has provided data to evaluate materials, systems, and living specimens exposed to radiation, meteoroids, debris, and other constituents of the low-Earth environment. Structural, mechanical, electrical, optical, and thermal systems were studied, and materials with applications in all aspects of space systems were exposed to the space environment. The objectives of the LDEF archival system are to maintain the existing LDEF hardware, data, analysis, publications, and photographs as a long term resource, and to provide a quick and simple mechanism by which LDEF resources can be identified, located, and applied.