Perigee: 130 to 400 km

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The Atmospheric Explorer-E (AE-E) spacecraft (Designation: 08440 /
75107A) was designed as a multi- sided polyhedron shaped frame with a
mean diameter of 1.4 meters. AE-E was similar in construction ... and
instrumentation to AE-C. AE-E was launched on 1975-11-20 and decayed
on 1981-06-10.

The purpose of the AE-C mission was to investigate the uppermost layer
of the earth's atmosphere, the thermosphere, with emphasis on energy
transfer and other controlling processes. Photochemical processes
related to the absorption of solar UV radiation were studied by making
coordinated measurements of reacting constituents and the solar input.
Simultaneous two-spacecraft sampling was carried out at higher
latitudes by the AE-D and AE-E spacecraft until the failure of AE-D on
January 29, 1976, and then by (the re-activated) AE-C and AE-E
spacecraft until AE-C re-entered the earth's atmosphere on December
12, 1978.

The AE-E perigee swept through more than six full latitude cycles and
two local time cycles during the first year after launch when the
orbit was elliptical, and the perigee height was varied between 130
and 400 km. The circularization of the orbit around 390 km was made
on November 20, 1976, and the spacecraft perigee was raised to this
height whenever it had decayed to about 250 km. AE-E re-entered the
earth's atmosphere on June 10, 1981 thus terminating the operations.
The payload included instrumentation to measure: Solar UV Fluxes, the
Composition of Positive Ions and Neutral Particles, the Density and
Temperature of neutral particles, positive ions and electrons,
Atmospheric airglow emissions, Photoelectron Energy Spectra, Proton
and Electron Fluxes with particle energy up to 25 keV, and a
backscatter UV spectrometer to monitor the atmospheric ozone content.
Power was supplied by a solar cell array. The spacecraft used a PCM
telemetry data system that operated in real time or using a tape
recorder.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/database/MasterCatalog?sc=1975-107A