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OPM: In Depth
If you're going
to build a space station, how do you know
which materials to use? What will and won't
last for decades in the unforgiving environment
of space? And just what is that environment,
anyway? The Optical Properties Monitor (OPM)
was a space flight experiment built to answer
these questions.
From April
to December 1997, the OPM, in its position
on the outside of the Mir's Space Shuttle
docking module, monitored the space environment
around Mir and took measurements on material
samples. It examined the samples for changes
caused by exposure to the space environment.
The OPM was transported to and from Mir
in a SPACEHAB laboratory module flying in
the payload bay of the Space Shuttle.
Many materials-exposure experiments had flown before, on the Space
Shuttle, Mir, Skylab, and even going all
the way back to the days of the Saturn 5
and the Apollo missions and have continued since OPM's flight on the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE). However, most of
these were passive experiments which relied
on Earth-based analysis of the samples after
the flight. Exposure to the Earth's environment
after the flight alters the samples and
makes some types of measurements difficult
or impossible.
The OPM was an active experiment
which took its measurements while the exposed
samples were still in the space vacuum. It
was the first materials exposure experiment
capable of taking in situ measurements and
down linking the data to Earth while the
experiment progressed.
The OPM was a joint effort between NASA's Marshall
Space Flight Center, and AZ Technology.
OPM Design Details>
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