scope:

This AIAA Guide provides guidelines regarding the current natural terrestrial environment criteria for use in the design and development of aerospace vehicles traversing the terrestrial atmosphere (0-90 km altitude). This Guide specifies and provides, in one single reference, a comprehensive description of the state of the art of these natural terrestrial environment inputs. The contents to be used are based on aerospace vehicle development experiences and consolidated guidelines for natural terrestrial environments that have been utilized in a large number of space vehicle developments.

Aerospace vehicle design criteria guidelines are provided for the following environmental phenomena: winds; atmospheric models and thermodynamic properties; thermal radiation; U.S. and world surface extremes; humidity; precipitation, fog, and icing; cloud phenomena and cloud cover models; atmospheric electricity; atmospheric constituents; aerospace vehicle exhaust and toxic chemical release; tornadoes and hurricanes; geologic hazards; and sea state. Sections 15 and 16 of this AIAA Guide based on the referenced NASA TM include information on mission analysis, prelaunch monitoring, flight evaluation, physical constants, and metric/English unit conversion factors.