EXAMINATION OF THEORY FOR BOW SHOCK ULTRAVIOLET ROCKET EXPERIMENTS .1.

Comparison is made between the results obtained from modifications to a state-of-the-art radiation code and bow shock uv radiation data obta ined from recent flight experiments. Initial predictions of the radiat ion did not yield satisfactory comparison with the first night experim ent flown at 3.5 km/s between altitudes of 40-70 km, despite improveme nts to the original flow model. It is found that characterizing the NO excited state population with the translational temperature, rather t han the vibrational temperature, yields better comparison to the fligh t data. Comparison of bow shock data from the second flight, flown at 5.1 km/s at altitudes of 70-90 km, shows that improvements in either f low or radiation modeling are still needed, particularly at high altit udes.