Fig. 5.a. Measured total electron content vs time following Skylab I launch on line-of-sight from Sagamore Hill Observatory to ATS-3 (from Mendillo et al. (1,2). b. Model computation of TEC vs time for same line-of-sight for the 24 h preceding and 4 h following the Skylab launch. Hill-ATS-3 line-of-sight. Figure 5a is the observational data on the Skylab launch day, taken from the paper by Mendillo et al. (1). Figure 5b is a plot of the computed TEC for the same line-of-sight for the 24 h preceding and 6 h following the Skylab launch. The qualitative features of the computed TEC-vs-time curve agree with the data. The same can be said for comparisons of the computed results with the data from the other lines of sight. From the computations, we draw the conclusion that the ionospheric hole did not actually recover after 4 h, but rather blew out of the observational lines-of-sight. According to the computations, a significant plasma depletion still existed at sunset and persisted overnight. The model results depend critically on the thermospheric wind description used in
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