The measurements of vehicle glow on the Space Shuttle

Abstract

From the combined data set of glow observations on STS-3, STS-4 and STS-5 some of the properties of the shuttle glow were observed. Comparison of the STS-3 (240 km) and STS-5 (305 km) photographs show that the intensity of the glow is about a factor of 3.5 brighter on the low altitude (STS-3) flight. The orbiter was purposely rotated about the x axis in an experiment on STS-5 to observe the dependence of the intensity on the angle of incidence between the spacecraft surface normal and the velocity vector. For a relatively large angle between the velocity vector and the surface normal there is an appreciable glow, provided the surface is not shadowed by some other spacecraft structure. As the angle becomes less the glow intensifies. The grating experiments (STS-4 photography only, STS-5 image intensifier photography) provided a preliminary low resolution spectra of the spacecraft glow. Accurate wavelength calibrations of the STS-5 instrument permitted measuring of the spectrum and intensity of the Earth's airglow