Post-flight inspections of Space Shuttle orbiters continue to produce valuable data on the natural and artificial particulate environment in low Earth orbit. A new, more comprehensive assessment of these mission data has been recently initiated at JSC with preliminary results anticipated in 1999. The first campaign occurred in early February. The second campaign, conducted in April, was more ambitious. The suite of sensors used was unprecedented.
Preliminary results indicate that the test was outstandingly successful.
All sensors obtained results although the Goldstone radar reported some signal interference and the LMT was delayed several days due to cloud cover. The star of the campaign appears to have been the Cobra Dane radar. Although Cobra Dane only detected objects larger than about 5 cm diameter, it was the only phased-array radar in the campaign. Using this large detection area, the radar saw approximately 1100 unique, uncorrelated targets, which are not in the Space Command catalog of orbiting objects. The data are very valuable in determining inclination and altitude distributions in the 5-10 cm diameter debris size regime.