Abstract : The investigation of hypervelocity shocks that began with the highly successful Bowshock I and II atmospheric sounding rocket experiments continued with the DEBI flight experiment. Instruments aboard the earlier vehicles performed measurements of the ultraviolet and vacuum ultraviolet emission excited in the high temperature gas produced by the shock ahead of the hypervelocity body. With the DEBI experiment, we developed the experimental techniques and the instruments necessary to expand those earlier experiments into the infrared portion of the spectrum where ground-state, molecular, ro-vibrational emission can be observed as the most direct measure of shock temperatures.