American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Research Letters, 13(32), 2005
DOI: 10.1029/2005gl023054
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New satellite observations reveal lower thermospheric transport of a space shuttle exhaust plume into the southern hemisphere two days after a January, 2003 launch. A day later, ground-based lidar observations in Antarctica identify iron ablated from the shuttle's main engines. Additional satellite observations of polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) show a burst that constitutes 10-20% of the PMC mass between 65-79 deg S during the 2002-2003 season, comparable to previous results for an Arctic shuttle plume. This shows that shuttle exhaust can be an important global source of both PMC formation and variability.