CAMEO (satellite)

CAMEO (Chemically Active Material Ejected in Orbit) was a piggy-back experiment included in the Nimbus-G launch by the Goddard Space Flight Center. The primary objective of the investigation was to study the magnetosphere-ionosphere interactions by observing the dynamics of neutral (barium) and ion (lithium) clouds released at orbital velocities near the Earth. It had a mass of approximately 89 kg and consisted basically of batteries, of one lithium and four barium gas canisters. The CAMEO unit remained attached to the second stage of the Delta vehicle. This was the first opportunity to observe the behavior of conventional barium release when conducted at orbital velocity in the near-earth magnetic field.

Method
This investigation consisted of a sequential release of four successive thermite barium canisters and a single long-duration lithium release from the orbiting second stage of the Nimbus 7 Delta launch vehicle. The barium releases occurred October 29, 1978, along a track north of Alaska (79N to 74N) and was observed by many ground stations and was tracked from release at around 950 km out to about 5 earth radii during a one-hour period. The lithium release lasted for 50 seconds over southern Sweden on November 6, 1978. Observations of the neutral and ion clouds were observed optically by various ground sites.

The principal unexpected characteristic in the release dynamics was the high, 1.4 to 2.6 km/s, initial Ba expansion velocity relative to an expected velocity of 0.9 km/s. Attention was also given to neutral cloud expansion, initial ion cloud expansion, convective motion, and the characteristics of field-aligned motion. The possibility of measuring parallel electric fields over the polar cap by observing perturbations in the motion of the visible ions was assessed.

Conspiracy theories surrounding CAMEO
Because of the lack of thorough documentation and the appearance in a declassified document by the GAO, CAMEO has been clumped in with the chemtrails and HAARP conspiracy theories.