[4] The LACE mission concept began in February 1985 when the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization approached the Naval Research Laboratory to develop an experiment to characterize laser signals transmitted and received through the Earth's atmosphere from a ground station to an orbiting experiment.

Since then the laboratory had developed satellites to perform experiments relating to solar radiation, radio transmission through the ionosphere, gravity gradient stabilization, and ocean surveillance, among others.

The simple, spaceborne experiment was planned to be flown on the next flight of NASA's Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), launched aboard the Space Shuttle.

Because the LDEF was a completely passive payload, LACE would've required additional power and communication subsystems to function properly.

After the Challenger disaster, shuttle launches were delayed indefinitely, and the LDEF would remain in orbit from the beginning of its first mission until 1990.

[6]: 2 [7]: 1 Before launch, LACE was placed in the Delta II's payload fairing alongside the Relay Mirror Experiment (RME) satellite.

It accomplished this using three 150 ft (46 m) long booms pointing along the forward, rear, and zenith axes of the spacecraft relative to the direction of its motion.

While the zenith boom would remain fully extended during normal operation, the two booms along the forward and rear axes were designed to be extended and retracted 125 times during the 30 months of LACE's planned mission, and successfully did so over 65 times, albeit most movements were minor.

Later in the mission, this array was re-calibrated to 1.06 μm to support the USAF Starfire Optical Range at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.

The array's 40 sensors were distributed uniformly across the target board, and detected deuterium fluoride chemical laser emissions between 3.6 and 4.0 μm.

Background imaging included the day, night, and dawn limb, aurora, sunlit and moonlit clouds, and the Earth's surface.

The experiment was jointly developed by the Grumman Corporation and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy.

The classified experiment was the only one not operated for the Strategic Defense Initiative, and was not discussed by the SDIO nor the NRL prior to launch.

[22] However, due to Atlantis maneuvering to avoid a spent Soviet booster in orbit, and a failure of one of its IMUs, NASA's flight rules brought the mission to an early end.