Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the assessment of models of a wake shield environment around various spacecraft, Universities Space Research Association

Models depicting the ambient atmosphere which can overtake the spacecraft vacuum shield are presented. The subject areas discussed are: possible changing effects on the wake shield environment; possible utilization of the induced environmental contamination monitor; present state of the knowledge of the parameters used to describe the intermolecular collisions; the possibility of using simple models to describe the wake shield environment; possible errors associated with using kinetic theory to calculate that part of the atmosphere overtaking the shield; and a general assessment of the Monte Carlo techniques used to calculate the shield environment.