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Antarctic mesospheric clouds formed from space shuttle exhaust
E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D. C., USA
School of Computational Sciences, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, USA
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA
Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI), Lanham, Maryland, USA
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
New satellite observations reveal lower thermospheric transport of a space shuttle exhaust plume into the southern hemisphere two days after a January, 2003 launch. A day later, ground-based lidar observations in Antarctica identify iron ablated from the shuttle's main engines. Additional satellite observations of polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) show a burst that constitutes 10–20% of the PMC mass between 65–79°S during the 2002–2003 season, comparable to previous results for an Arctic shuttle plume. This shows that shuttle exhaust can be an important global source of both PMC formation and variability.
Received 22 March 2005; accepted 26 May 2005; published 6 July 2005.
Citation: (2005), Antarctic mesospheric clouds formed from space shuttle exhaust, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L13810, doi:10.1029/2005GL023054.
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