Long-Duration Exposure Facility

The large majority of the craters appeared to be generally symmetric and hemispheric in shape, exhibiting the typical lip or rim around the crater. The crater interior surfaces generally displayed evidence of being molten during the crater formation process. Only in a very few rare craters could chunks or fragments of the impacting particle be found. Almost every type of spacecraft surface or material that was in use in the 1980's, or conceived for potential use in the foreseeable future was exposed to the low-Earth orbit environment on LDEF. Therefore, examinations of the impact-induced damage to such surfaces/materials provided extremely valuable information for spacecraft designers. One of the most significant results from the inspection of impact sites on LDEF was the fact that much of the total damage resulted from the effects of several environmental factors of LEO space, and not just hypervelocity impacts by meteoroid or debris particles. (USAF photo)