Space Shuttle Columbia STS 3 Mission. A model of opportunity ahead for exploring the Space Environment.

Launched on 22nd March 1982, it carried a massive NASA Office of Space Science Pathfinder mission payload. Placed into orbit at 249 km altitude in the Shuttle bay it orbited the Earth for 10 days, landing at the White Sands Missile Range New Mexico. The only shuttle to do so.

Atop a thermal oven experiment was a one metre array of thin foil capture cells from the Unit for Space Science and Astropysics, the UK University of Kent (right).

The array, above comprised 12 cm wide stips of foil mounted on mesh separating it only mm from a Kapton substrate. Ready location of hypervelocity Meteoroids or Space Debris on the foils by light transmission enabled sectioning out, together with the corresponding splattered impact debris on the Kapton.

A 5 micron crater, rear side

The splattered debris can be analysed to reveal the elemental signature of the projectile; a service which interests the astrophysicist and would elicit use of their microanalytical facilities. Is it Cometary? Asteroidal? Space Debris?

A topside meteoroid crater, 30 microns