Spacecraft glows and laboratory luminescence: Evidence for a common reaction mechanism

Surface‐mediated O + NO recombination, a key reaction in spacecraft glow, has been investigated in the laboratory and the results used to provide a re‐evaluation of Atmosphere Explorer glow. A value for the rate coefficient is determined. The luminescence of the desorbed NO 2 *, lifetime 134 ± 27 µs is first order in both O and NO flux and is independent of O‐atom translational energy in the range 0.2 – 0.9 eV. Using this data and three identified processes contributing to NO formation in orbit, our remodelling removes earlier ambiguity in the interpretation of Explorer glow and provides the first reported correlation of orbital glow data in respect of altitude, ram angle dependence and absolute photon flux. We hypothesise that a single, common, reaction is predominantly responsible for laboratory, spacecraft and shuttle luminescence.