Study of meteorological conditions along actual or proposed reentry trajectories

The Air Force Geophysics Laboratory (AFGL) has been tasked by the Space Division (SD) of the Air Force Systems Command to provide meteorological support and analyses in support of the Advanced Ballistic Reentry Systems (ABRES) Program. The primary objectives of the work carried out under this contract by Environmental Research and Technology, Inc. (ERT) have been to assist AFGL in: (1) the design and analyses of experiments to assess the probable error of the AGFL aircraft/radar methodology for characterizing the cloud microphysical environment along a reentry trajectory, (2) the development and testing of improved analytical methods for describing the cloud microphysical environment along a reentry trajectory, and (3) the generation of environmental statistics to be used as input to operations analyses of possible future reentry tests of experiments. Another major portion of the work involved the maintenance and running of many computer programs; these programs have been documented and form a part of this report.