This contribution proposes a description of selected experimental activities conducted in aerospace sciencesand dedicated to generate experimental data to assess atmospheric entry plasma models. In order to providecomprehensive set of experimental data, high enthalpy shock tube facilities have been developed to generate plasmarepresentative of entry plasma for broad range of trajectory entry conditions. The shock-heated plasma is obtained throughadiabatic compression and the resulting post-shock plasma flow exhibits thermodynamic state analogous to actual entryplasma. However, significant insight can be obtained through experiments conducted also with non-equilibrium plasmaflows obtained with other methods. The typical methodologies adopted to provide experimental data of interest to enhanceentry plasma modeling are sketched for four distinct non-equilibrium plasma kinds produced respectively by four specificground facilities. The contribution firstly will consider experimental campaigns conducted with a high enthalpy shocktube in order to document in absolute radiance the radiative signature in the UV spectral range of an Earth entry plasma.Then, the investigations of the interaction between a shock wave and an electrical discharge will be described. Theseinvestigations were performed to identify the role of the internal degrees of freedom of molecular gases on thepropagation of the shock. Also, the contribution covers investigations devoted to the thermodynamic statecharacterizations by means of spectroscopic diagnostics in the cases of the non-equilibrium plasmas flows generated byplasma wind tunnels. The examination of the Saha-Boltzmann equilibrium is proposed in the case of a subsonic plasmaflow. And at last, the characterization methods of air supersonic plasma jet are presented and the 2D distributions of thesubsequently measured plasma properties are documented for a straight comparisons with non-equilibrium plasma jetcomputations.
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