NASA’s AWE Mission Concludes After Revealing How Earth’s Storms Shape Space Weather
"The mission showed that Earth's weather extends beyond clouds and shapes space weather affecting the orbital economy."
— Joe Westlake, Director of NASA's Heliophysics Division
Mission Overview
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA's Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE), officially ending its data collection phase after surpassing its planned two-year mission. Installed on the International Space Station in November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves—the ripples in the atmosphere caused by strong winds over mountains or violent weather events such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.
The instrument observed these waves via airglow, the colorful bands of light naturally present in Earth's atmosphere. Funded by NASA's Heliophysics Division, the mission investigated how these waves travel to space and contribute to space weather, a phenomenon that can disrupt satellites and communication signals.
Key Results
- Record-breaking observations: During its 30-month residency, AWE captured four infrared images per second, amassing over 80 million nighttime images.
- Major events captured: The instrument recorded gravity waves from a May 2024 tornado outbreak in the central U.S. and Hurricane Helene in September 2024.
- New scientific insight: Data showed that gravity waves from thunderstorms can be smaller and more irregular than those produced by other storms.
- High-impact findings: Measurements confirmed that the gravity waves with the greatest influence on the upper atmosphere have small horizontal wavelengths (30-300 km)—precisely the range AWE was built to detect.
Instrument Removal and Replacement
The AWE instrument will be removed from the Space Station by the Canadarm2 robotic arm and then placed into a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. The spacecraft will deorbit and burn up during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.
All observations will be made public for ongoing research. The replacement instrument, CLARREO Pathfinder, will measure sunlight reflected by Earth and the Moon with extremely high accuracy.
Expert Statements
Ludger Scherliess, AWE principal investigator at Utah State University, summarized the mission's significance:
"Major terrestrial events produce clear upper-atmospheric responses."