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By NASA
4 min read
NASA Atmospheric Wave-Studying Mission Releases Data from First 3,000 Orbits
Following the 3,000th orbit of NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) aboard the International Space Station, researchers publicly released the mission’s first trove of scientific data, crucial to investigate how and why subtle changes in Earth’s atmosphere cause disturbances, as well as how these atmospheric disturbances impact technological systems on the ground and in space.
“We’ve released the first 3,000 orbits of data collected by the AWE instrument in space and transmitted back to Earth,” said Ludger Scherliess, principal investigator for the mission and physics professor at Utah State University. “This is a view of atmospheric gravity waves never captured before.”
Available online, the data release contains more than five million individual images of nighttime airglow and atmospheric gravity wave observations collected by the instrument’s four cameras, as well as derived temperature and airglow intensity swaths of the ambient air and the waves.
This image shows AWE data combined from two of the instrument’s passes over the United States. The red and orange wave-structures show increases in brightness (or radiance) in infrared light produced by airglow in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA/AWE/Ludger Scherliess “AWE is providing incredible images and data to further understand what we only first observed less than a decade ago,” said Esayas Shume, AWE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are thrilled to share this influential data set with the larger scientific community and look forward to what will be discovered.”
Members of the AWE science team gather in the mission control room at Utah State University to view data collected by the mapping instrument mounted on the outside of the International Space Station. SDL/Allison Bills Atmospheric gravity waves occur naturally in Earth’s atmosphere and are formed by Earth’s weather and topography. Scientists have studied the enigmatic phenomena for years, but mainly from a few select sites on Earth’s surface.
“With data from AWE, we can now begin near-global measurements and studies of the waves and their energy and momentum on scales from tens to hundreds and even thousands of kilometers,” Scherliess said. “This opens a whole new chapter in this field of research.”
Data from AWE will also provide insight into how terrestrial and space weather interactions affect satellite communications, and navigation, and tracking.
“We’ve become very dependent on satellites for applications we use every day, including GPS navigation,” Scherliess said. “AWE is an attempt to bring science about atmospheric gravity waves into focus, and to use that information to better predict space weather that can disrupt satellite communications. We will work closely with our collaborators to better understand how these observed gravity waves impact space weather.”
AWE’s principal investigator, Ludger Scherliess, briefs collaborators of initial analysis of early AWE data. Information from the NASA-funded mission is helping scientists better understand how weather on Earth affects weather in space. SDL/Allison Bills The tuba-shaped AWE instrument, known as the Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper or AMTM, consists of four identical telescopes. It is mounted to the exterior of the International Space Station, where it has a view of Earth.
As the space station orbits Earth, the AMTM’s telescopes capture 7,000-mile-long swaths of the planet’s surface, recording images of atmospheric gravity waves as they move from the lower atmosphere into space. The AMTM measures and records the brightness of light at specific wavelengths, which can be used to create air and wave temperature maps. These maps can reveal the energy of these waves and how they are moving through the atmosphere.
To analyze the data and make it publicly available, AWE researchers and students at USU developed new software to tackle challenges that had never been encountered before.
“Reflections from clouds and the ground can obscure some of the images, and we want to make sure the data provide clear, precise images of the power transported by the waves,” Scherliess said. “We also need to make sure the images coming from the four separate AWE telescopes on the mapper are aligned correctly. Further, we need to ensure stray light reflections coming off the solar panels of the space station, along with moonlight and city lights, are not masking the observations.”
As the scientists move forward with the mission, they’ll investigate how gravity wave activity changes with seasons around the globe. Scherliess looks forward to seeing how the global science community will use the AWE observations.
“Data collected through this mission provides unprecedented insight into the role of weather on the ground on space weather,” he said.
AWE is led by Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and it is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory built the AWE instrument and provides the mission operations center.
By Mary-Ann Muffoletto
Utah State University, Logan, UT
NASA Media Contact: Sarah Frazier
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Last Updated Mar 14, 2025 Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
Week in images: 10-14 March 2025
Discover our week through the lens
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By European Space Agency
Video: 01:08:00 Watch the replay of our Hera mission Mars flyby event. On 12 March 2025, ESA’s Hera mission came to within 5000 km of the surface of the red planet and 300 km of Mars’s more distant and enigmatic moon Deimos. During this flyby, Hera performed observations of both Mars and the city-sized Deimos. Hera then needed to swing its High Gain Antenna back to Earth to transmit its data home. On Thursday, 13 March, these images were premiered by Hera’s science team from ESA’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany, explaining what they reveal, during our public webcast starting at 11:50 CET. The team was joined by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst and renowned science fiction writer Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary, as well as a surprise special guest!
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By NASA
4 Min Read NASA Cameras on Blue Ghost Capture First-of-its-Kind Moon Landing Footage
This compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence of the Blue Ghost final descent and landing that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second. Altitude data is approximate. Credits: NASA/Olivia Tyrrell A team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, has captured first-of-its-kind imagery of a lunar lander’s engine plumes interacting with the Moon’s surface, a key piece of data as trips to the Moon increase in the coming years under the agency’s Artemis campaign.
The Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1 instrument took the images during the descent and successful soft landing of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on the Moon’s Mare Crisium region on March 2, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
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This compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence of the Blue Ghost final descent and landing that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second. Altitude data is approximate.NASA/Olivia Tyrrell The compressed, resolution-limited video features a preliminary sequence that NASA researchers stitched together from SCALPSS 1.1’s four short-focal-length cameras, which were capturing photos at 8 frames per second during the descent and landing.
The sequence, using approximate altitude data, begins roughly 91 feet (28 meters) above the surface. The descent images show evidence that the onset of the interaction between Blue Ghost’s reaction control thruster plumes and the surface begins at roughly 49 feet (15 meters). As the descent continues, the interaction becomes increasingly complex, with the plumes vigorously kicking up the lunar dust, soil and rocks — collectively known as regolith. After touchdown, the thrusters shut off and the dust settles. The lander levels a bit and the lunar terrain beneath and immediately around it becomes visible.
Although the data is still preliminary, the 3000-plus images we captured appear to contain exactly the type of information we were hoping for…
Rob Maddock
SCALPSS project manager
“Although the data is still preliminary, the 3000-plus images we captured appear to contain exactly the type of information we were hoping for in order to better understand plume-surface interaction and learn how to accurately model the phenomenon based on the number, size, thrust and configuration of the engines,” said Rob Maddock, SCALPSS project manager. “The data is vital to reducing risk in the design and operation of future lunar landers as well as surface infrastructure that may be in the vicinity. We have an absolutely amazing team of scientists and engineers, and I couldn’t be prouder of each and every one of them.”
As trips to the Moon increase and the number of payloads touching down in proximity to one another grows, scientists and engineers need to accurately predict the effects of landings. Data from SCALPSS will better inform future robotic and crewed Moon landings.
The SCALPSS 1.1 technology includes six cameras in all, four short focal length and two long focal length. The long-focal-length cameras allowed the instrument to begin taking images at a higher altitude, prior to the onset of the plume-surface interaction, to provide a more accurate before-and-after comparison of the surface. Using a technique called stereo photogrammetry, the team will later combine the overlapping images – one set from the long-focal-length cameras, another from the short focal length – to create 3D digital elevation maps of the surface.
This animation shows the arrangement of the six SCALPSS 1.1 cameras and the instrument’s data storage unit. The cameras are integrated around the base of the Blue Ghost lander. Credit: NASA/Advanced Concepts Lab The instrument is still operating on the Moon and as the light and shadows move during the long lunar day, it will see more surface details under and immediately around the lander. The team also hopes to capture images during the transition to lunar night to observe how the dust responds to the change.
“The successful SCALPSS operation is a key step in gathering fundamental knowledge about landing and operating on the Moon, and this technology is already providing data that could inform future missions,” said Michelle Munk, SCALPSS principal investigator.
The successful SCALPSS operation is a key step in gathering fundamental knowledge about landing and operating on the Moon, and this technology is already providing data that could inform future missions
Michelle Munk
SCALPSS principal investigator
It will take the team several months to fully process the data from the Blue Ghost landing. They plan to issue raw images from SCALPSS 1.1 publicly through NASA’s Planetary Data System within six months.
The team is already preparing for its next flight on Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, scheduled to launch later this year. The next version of SCALPSS is undergoing thermal vacuum testing at NASA Langley ahead of a late-March delivery to Blue Origin.
The SCALPSS 1.1 project is funded by the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Game Changing Development program.
NASA is working with several American companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Through this opportunity, various companies from a select group of vendors bid on delivering payloads for NASA including everything from payload integration and operations, to launching from Earth and landing on the surface of the Moon.
About the Author
Joe Atkinson
Public Affairs Officer, NASA Langley Research Center
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Last Updated Mar 13, 2025 Related Terms
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