Reentry Emission of Stardust Capsule

Abstract

On the night of January 15 2006, Stardust Reentry Capsule observing campaing was carried out using imagers and spectrographs onboad NASA's airbone DC-8. In order to understand physical processes occuring in natural meteors and meteorites, we performed spectroscopy using an intensified high-definition TV observation with a reflection grating 500 grooves/mm in the wavelength between 300 and 650 nm. The capsule, 0.8 m in diameter, entered the atmosphere by the speed of 12.9 km/s, which was the fastest artificial objects in our history.