This box contains a flight spare set of experimental surfaces
for the Prospero satellite that was launched in 1971. They were
designed to tell scientists more about how different satellite
materials and finishes – matt, shiny etc, would behave in the
temperature extremes of space. It has always reminded me of a
much larger experiment flown by NASA (LDEF - which stands for
Long Duration Exposure Facility) that was covered with all sorts
of equivalent surfaces. The LDEF was brought back to Earth in
the Shuttle and scientists discovered that its surfaces were
covered with impact craters from micro-meteoroids. That was back
in the 1980s but if the mission were to be repeated now it would
almost certainly suffer many more collisions from the bits of
space debris that we have put up there. There are thousands upon
thousands of pieces of rocket and spacecraft circling Earth and
it is becoming a big problem for satellite operators. At a
meeting last week Air Commodore Stuart Evans RAF, Head of Joint
Doctrine, Air and