Mir Environmental Effects Payload - History

History

MEEP was designed to assess the magnitude of molecular contamination in ISS critical exterior surfaces in the space environment and to quantify the performance and degradation rate of candidate and selected ISS exterior surface materials. NASA's Langley Research Center had overall responsibility for MEEP as well as the development of the Passive Equipment Carriers as well as the PPMD experiment. Johnson Space Center was responsible for the ODC, Marshall Space Flight Center for POSA I and Boeing's Defence and Space Group for POSA II.

The MEEP experiment hardware was launched to Mir aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-76. The four experiments installed on the docking module during the only EVA of the mission, carried out by Michael Clifford and Linda Godwin on flight day six, 27 March 1996. MEEP remained attached to Mir for 18 months until 1 October 1997, when, during flight day seven of STS-86, the experiments were retrieved in an EVA by Vladimir Titov and Scott Parazynski. In addition to the MEEP experiments, a solar array which had been exposed to the space environment for more than ten years was removed from the core module of Mir in November 1997, and returned to Earth in January 1998 on STS-89. The experiments were then inspected and studied by teams of space environmental effects investigators for micrometeoroid and space debris effects, space exposure effects on materials, and electrical performance.

Also MEEPS can trace their inception to the Passive Optical Sample Array (POSA) sample trays flown on STS-1 and STS-2, and their successor Effects of Oxygen Interaction with Materials (EOIM) on STS-3 and STS-5.