wake shield facility

Launched September 7, 1995, landed September 18, 1995. The 11-day mission will feature the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), a saucer-shaped satellite that will fly free of the Shuttle for several days. The Spartan 201 free-flyer will be making its third flight aboard the Shuttle. STS-69 will see the first flight of the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-1)

STS-60 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried Sergei K. Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on 3 February 1994 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission carried the Wake Shield Facility experiment and a SPACEHAB module into orbit, and carried out a live bi-directional audio and downlink link-up with the cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir.

At first glance this patch is very similar to the Eagle Crest STS-60 emblem, however subtle differences can be observed.

STS-60 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried Sergei K. Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on 3 February 1994 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission carried the Wake Shield Facility experiment and a SPACEHAB module into orbit, and carried out a live bi-directional audio and downlink link-up with the cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir.

STS-60 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried Sergei K. Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on 3 February 1994 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission carried the Wake Shield Facility experiment and a SPACEHAB module into orbit, and carried out a live bi-directional audio and downlink link-up with the cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir.

This version of the STS-60 patch features the astronaut names in Cyrillic lettering.

STS-60 was the first mission of the US/Russian Shuttle-Mir Program, which carried Sergei K. Krikalev, the first Russian cosmonaut to fly aboard a Space Shuttle. The mission used Space Shuttle Discovery, which lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on 3 February 1994 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The mission carried the Wake Shield Facility experiment and a SPACEHAB module into orbit, and carried out a live bi-directional audio and downlink link-up with the cosmonauts aboard the Russian space station Mir.

Launched September 7, 1995, landed September 18, 1995. The 11-day mission will feature the second flight of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), a saucer-shaped satellite that will fly free of the Shuttle for several days. The Spartan 201 free-flyer will be making its third flight aboard the Shuttle. STS-69 will see the first flight of the International Extreme Ultraviolet Hitchhiker (IEH-1)

SPACEHAB, Inc.'s Wake Shield Facility provides a unique, free-standing environment for scientific experiments to be conducted in outer space. Experiments attached to the ram side of the shield are exposed to high atomic oxygen. Experiments on the wake side are in an extremely high-quality vacuum environment. This flight-proven facility, deployed under the auspices of the Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center of the University of Houston, provides a platform for exposure experiments, materials processing and annealing, and communications payloads testing. The Wake Shield Facility is also equipped with an attitude control system capable of better than 2° pointing accuracy during free flight. Flown on STS-69
Wake Shield Facility is an experimental science platform that was placed in low-earth orbit by the Space Shuttle. It is a 3.7 meter (12 ft) diameter, free-flying stainless steel disk.
The WSF was deployed in the wake of the Space Shuttle at an orbital altitude of over 300 kilometers (186 mi), within the thermosphere, where the atmosphere is exceedingly tenuous. The forward edge of the WSF disk redirected atmospheric and other particles around the sides, leaving an "ultra-vacuum" in its wake. The resulting vacuum was used to study epitaxial film growth.
The WSF has flown into space three times, on board shuttle flights STS-60, STS-69 and STS-80. During STS-60, some hardware issues were experienced, and, as a result, the WSF was only deployed at the end of the shuttle's robotic arm. During the later missions, the WSF was deployed as a free-flying platform in the wake of the shuttle.