Materials International Space Station Experiment
The MISSE project evaluates the performance, stability, and long-term survivability of materials and components planned for use by NASA, commercial companies and the Department of Defense (DOD) on future low Earth orbit (LEO), synchronous orbit and interplanetary space missions.
The Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF), which was retrieved in 1990 after spending 68 months in LEO, revealed that space environments are very hostile to many spacecraft materials and components.
Impacts of meteoroids and orbiting man-made debris can damage all materials exposed in space.
Samples range from components such as switches, sensors and mirrors to materials like polymers, coatings, and composites.
MISSE will also be testing coatings used to control heat absorption and emission temperatures of satellites.
Ultra-light membrane structures are planned for solar sails, large inflatable mirrors and lenses.
The experiments are photographed several times during their stay outside if possible, usually whenever an opportunity arises due to a scheduled EVA.
[3] The first and second set of experiments was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery, during mission STS-105, on 10 August 2001 and contained 910 specimens of various materials.
MISSE-5 was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-114, on 26 July 2005 and contained 254 specimens of various materials.
The third experiment involved the PCSat-2 that provided a communications system and tested the Amateur Satellite Service off-the-shelf solution for telemetry command and control.
[3] The sixth set of MISSE experiments, labeled 6A and 6B, were launched by Space Shuttle Endeavour, during mission STS-123, on 13 March 2008 and contain over 400 specimens of various materials.
Being a first in the MISSE program, active experiments are designed to interface with the power and communication systems on ISS allowing data to be transmitted back to Earth.
These experiments included SpaceCube which was developed by engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and is a reconfigurable, high-performance system based on Xilinx's Virtex-4 commercial FPGAs designed for spaceflight applications requiring compute intensive on-board processing.
The MISSE-7 SpaceCube's purpose was to serve as an "on-orbit" test-bed for demonstrating "radiation hardened by software" program execution and error detection and correction techniques that will help enable the use of commercial processing devices in space.
[20] The active experiments on 7A included the Single Events Upset Xilinx-Sandia Experiment[18]: 35 which detected radiation effects on active FPGA circuits and detected more upset events at high latitudes and in the South Atlantic Anomaly.
[24] The Materials ISS Experiment Flight Facility (MISSE-FF) platform provides the ability to test materials, coatings, and components or other larger experiments in the harsh environment of space, which is virtually impossible to do collectively on Earth.
A new feature, not available in the past, is the ability of each MSC to take pictures of each sample on a monthly basis (or more often if required) which is provided to each Principal Investigator to monitor the status of their sample/experiment throughout its time on orbit.
Scientists test for material, or component durability, such as accelerated degradation, space contamination adherence, and mass loss.
The MISSE Project is a cooperative endeavor managed by NASA Langley Research Center.
