EDMO

Did you know that our facilities hold 65 Kg of scientific instrumentation that have returned safely from space?
Indeed, from September 9 to 20, 1994, EDMO, the Experiment for the Deposition of Materials in Orbit, flew into space aboard a Get Away Special container in the cargo bay of the Discovery spacecraft on flight STS-64. The experiment aimed at the deposition of thin films of various materials in the space vacuum and under microgravity conditions on board the Space Shuttle. 

EDMO was an automatic installation weighting 65Kg and with the shape of a cylinder (50 cm in diameter by 70 in height) integrating two ceramic evaporation cells and a molybdenum filament as well as its own integrated battery and control computer system. Inside, the evaporation of aluminium, gold and silicon was produced during 9 hours at 1400ºC so that high purity micro sheets were formed by condensation in the absence of oxygen and microgravity conditions.

After the successful mission execution, and subsequent Space Shuttle landing, EDMO was uninstalled from its Shuttle container and send back to CSIC and Airbus Crisa for analysis. The results of the experiment were optimal, executing the experiment as planned and obtaining a good quality of the samples.