Computations for support design of measurements of radiation from low velocity shocked air

Hypersonic computational fluid dynamics techniques have recently been used to estimate radiation for vehicles with trajectories in the flight regime of 40 to 60 km altitude and at speeds of about 3.5 km/s. An experiment will be flown shortly to provide the first data to validate these calculations. In this paper, we show how the same computational tools have been used to help in the planning of instruments, primarily for the measurement of optical radiation in the ultraviolet. Theoretical predictions are shown for a sphere-cone vehicle with nose radius of 4 in., at a speed of 3.6 km/s between the altitudes of 40 and 60 km, and are also related to the specific radiometric and spectroscopic measurements planned.