Feb 28, 2019
KENNEDY SPACE CENTRE: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has
launched a new mission to study the vast space weather system around the planet
earth that would significantly contribute to forecast of weather to sort out
issues interfering with radio communication and space exploration in the upper
atmosphere.
Extracts from a NASA paper: The Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) mission
will cost $42 million and is planned to launch in August 2022, attached to the
exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. From its space station
perch, AWE will focus on colorful bands of light in Earth's atmosphere, called
airglow, to determine what combination of forces drive space weather in the
upper atmosphere.
Researchers once thought that only the Sun's constant outflow of ultraviolet
light and particles, the solar wind, could affect the region. However, recently
they have learned that solar variability is not enough to drive the changes
observed, and Earth's weather also must be having an effect. To help unravel
that connection, AWE will investigate how waves in the lower atmosphere, caused
by variations in the densities of different packets of air, impact the upper
atmosphere.
AWE is a Mission of Opportunity under NASA's Heliophysics Explorers Program,
which conducts focused scientific research and develops instrumentation to fill
the scientific gaps between the agency's larger missions. Since the 1958 launch
of NASA's first satellite Explorer 1, which discovered Earth's radiation belts,
the Explorers Program has supported more than 90 missions. The Uhuru and Cosmic
Background Explorer (COBE) missions led to Nobel prizes for their investigators.
"The Explorers Program seeks innovative ideas for small and cost-constrained
missions that can help unravel the mysteries of the universe and explore our
place in it," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Director of Astrophysics. "This mission
absolutely meets that standard with a creative and cost-effective mission to
solve mysteries about Earth's upper atmosphere."
AWE was selected for development based on its potential science value and the
feasibility of its development plans. The mission is led by Michael Taylor at
Utah State University in Logan and it is managed by the Explorers Program Office
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
