During atmospheric entry, a spacecraft encounters more and more dense gas layers, leading to its aerodynamic deceleration. For super- and hypersonic velocity entries, a strong bow shock wave develops in front of the spacecraft, through which dynamic energy gets transformed into thermal energy. This leads to internal energy mode excitation and relaxation, chemical reactions, ionization, and, depending on the atmospheric gas composition, radiation. Therefore, not only the convective heating but also the radiative heating must be predicted in order to assess the global heat flux to the spacecraft heat shield. The present work has been motivated by the series of workshops organized by ESA on radiation of high-temperature gases in atmospheric entry.
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