NASA’s latest mission is to watch the weather. Space weather, that is. Planned to launch in August 2022 to the International Space Station, the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (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.”
“Space weather is important because it can have profound impacts—affecting technology and astronauts in space, disrupting radio communications and, at its most severe, overwhelming power grids,” says NASA. The $42 million program will provide key observations that will help refine our knowledge of how the Earth’s weather influences the upper atmosphere.
According to NASA, “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.”
