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Dr. Broadfoot heads a research program in planetary atmospheric studies. New data
from the Earth's atmosphere has been gathered with an instrument, GLO, the
Arizona Airglow Experiment, which was flown on the Space Shuttle several times,
the most recent being on STS-85 in August, 1997. The Earth atmosphere data were
gathered to make comparisons of observed atmospheric conditions with atmospheric
models that have been developed by several theoretical groups. Both dayglow and
nightglow data were acquired along the Shuttle orbit. Although modeling of the
dayglow atmosphere has been extensive observational data has been sparse. The
data is unique since it is a complete record of atmospheric conditions from sun
up to sun down and was obtained from 24 contiguous altitude levels in the
atmosphere. Also the data covers a broad spectral range giving simultaneous
measurements of all of the prominent nitrogen, oxygen, metallic ion, etc. from a
single column of gas through the atmosphere. The experiment is described on the
web at glo.lpl.arizona.edu/glo.
A second part of the flight program involves telescopic observations of the
Jovian planetary system. Of particular interest is the Io Plasma Torus. It is
large and can be viewed as a single entity from Earth. The observations
complement the measurements made from the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft at
Jupiter.
A third part of the program involves development of remote sensing
instrumentation for deployment on the International Space Station.
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