Excitement is building among NASA researchers and local high school students as they look forward to their first up-close look at materials experiments flown on the exterior of the International Space Station for four years.
On Monday, Nov. 14, at 10 a.m., members of the Electro-Physics Branch at the NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, and students from Hathaway Brown School, Shaker Heights, Ohio, will open the Polymer Erosion and Contamination Experiment (PEACE) and begin analyzing the effects of low Earth orbit on a variety of materials.
PEACE is part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) which is being conducted jointly by NASA and the Department of Defense to investigate the effects of long-term exposure of materials to the harsh environment of space. MISSE is managed by NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
MISSE 1 and 2 were the first experiments to be mounted externally on the International Space Station. PEACE, as part of MISSE 2, was taken to the space station in August 2001 during STS-105 and placed outside the Quest Airlock during a space walk. They were retrieved by astronauts this summer during Discovery’s STS-114 mission.
Media are invited to attend the opening of the PEACE experiment and talk with students and researchers about their preliminary observations. Media interested in attending should contact Sallie Keith at 216-433-5795 by 9 a.m. Nov. 14, to arrange for entry onto the Center.
