INTERACTIONS OF SATELLITE-SPEED HELIUM ATOMS WITH SATELLITE SURFACES III:DRAG COEFFICIENTS FROM SPATIAL AND ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS OF REFLECTED HEFLECTED HELIUM ATOMS

摘要

The aerodynamic drag of a satellite is predicted sometimes using a model in which the energy accommodation between the incident molecules and the satellite surface is complete and the reflected molecules are scattered diffusely (with a cosine scattering distribution). Hence, specific objectives of the present studies included (a).measurements of energy accommodation as a function of incidence angle and scattering direction, (b) measurements of scattering distribution as a function of incidence angle, and (c) calculation of the drag-coefficient from the forementioned measurements.