During the STS-8 space shuttle mission the vehicle glow was observed and photographed with an image intensified photographic camera. The altitude of the shuttle was 120 n.m. (222 km) and high intensity glow was observed, which was easily visible to the crew by naked eye. Three material test samples were mounted on the vehicle to test the dependance of the glow intensity on the nature of the surface material. These samples were exposed in the ram direction during the night side of the orbit. The glow intensity was found to depend on the nature of the surface. The mass loss suffered by the samples did not correlate with the intensity of the observed glow. The proper orientation of the shuttle with respect to the velocity vector and a camera objective grating gave a good objective spectrum of the glow in the visible region. From this it is clear that with the limited spectral resolution of the objective spectrum (about 150 A) the vehicle glow on the tail appears as continuum emission. The intensity of the tail glow becomes detectable at 4600 A and increases towards the red. Between 7000 A 8000 A a slight decrease in the glow intensity is inferred. The absolute intensity of the obliquely viewed tail around 7000 A and about 1 MR in the range within the transmission band of the image intensifier camera. The spectral distribution measured here seems to agree fairly well with that of the vehicle glow measured on the atmospheric explorer satellite.