NASA's AWE Project Launches To Learn More About Space Weather

NASA launched a first-of-its kind space weather experiment Thursday night aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that took off in perfect weather from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.

The project will measure undulating waves moving through Earth’s airglow, a colorful band of atmospheric light about 55 miles up in space.

It’s called the Atmospheric Wave Experiment, or AWE, and the idea is to learn more about weather, both in space and on Earth.

A booster from the rocket came back to Earth on land, versus on a ship offshore, a few minutes after takeoff. The rare night launch and landing was a treat for space watchers.

What to know:

-Weather was 100% go ahead of the 8:28 p.m. launch. The mission was a resupply to the International Space Station, carrying a payload that also included other science experiments and equipment.

-AWE was built by Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. Its four telescopes will be mounted on the side of the International Space Station.

-It will be looking at atmospheric gravity waves moving through Earth’s airglow, which is created when molecules of things like nitrogen and oxygen are energized by sunlight. Airglow is rarely visible from Earth.

-This happens in the coldest part of our atmosphere, where temperatures can drop to 150 degrees below zero. Temperature changes will help scientists measure the atmospheric gravity waves.

-”The lower atmosphere, that we get weather from, that we experience weather in, where we have thunderstorms and all kinds of other things, all those storms and mountains and everything else actually create waves in the atmosphere. And when you have waves, just like an ocean wave, it transfers energy … So we're, we're transferring energy up into the upper atmosphere.”

-“And those waves actually will impact how things move and the energy, the flow of the air … so as they go further into the atmosphere, they actually expand and get bigger.”

-”This is one of the first parts of trying to understand the physics of how these waves go up and impact space weather directly because we've never really had long term measurements of this kind of wave.”

-“Anything we can learn about these kinds of things will actually help us in our forecasting for terrestrial weather as well as space weather.”

More of our space coverage:

-​Euclid Telescope's First Images Are Amazing

-​Stratosphere Littered With Tiny Bits Of Space Junk, New Study Shows

-​How Queen's Brian May Helped NASA Map An Asteroid

Weather.com reporter Jan Childs covers breaking news and features related to weather, space, climate change, the environment and everything in between.

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