The WSF Flight Program was originally a series of four proof-of-concept missions aimed at determining the feasibility of the space wake vacuum environment for the industrial production of thin film semiconductor material. Using a fast track, low cost approach, commercial off the shelf (COTS) components, and proto-flight hardware, WSF-01 went from drawing board to orbit in under 60 months for less than $15M. The first two flights of the Wake Shield, in February 1994 (STS-60, Discovery) and September 1995 (STS-69, Endeavour), set the foundation for future utilization of the space vacuum environment. These missions produced the first characterization of vacuum wake formation and epitaxial growth in that wake vacuum of record purity gallium arsenide (GaAs) and aluminum gallium arsenide (AlGaAs) thin films. WSF-03 in November 1996 (STS-80, Columbia) continued experiments in advanced thin films for applications including high speed transistors, lasers, and solar cells, by growing material for device fabrication

The Wake Shield Facility has also served as a space-borne laboratory for exposure and microgravity experiments, and a test bed for instrument development. The three WSF flights have carried 25 cooperative payloads to orbit, taking advantage of the Wake Shield Free Flyer’s enhanced atomic oxygen flux, a true microgravity environment resulting from momentum bias attitude control, and interactive GAS can (“Smart Canister”) accommodations on the Wake Shield Facility Shuttle Payload Bay Cross Bay Carrier.