Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

SPIE Digital Library

Publisher

SPIE

Publication Date

10-3-2024

Journal Article Version

Version of Record

First Page

1

Last Page

16

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Abstract

NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) mission is a Heliophysics Small Explorers Mission of Opportunity designed to investigate how terrestrial weather affects space weather, via small-scale atmospheric gravity waves (GWs) produced in Earth’s atmosphere. Following its launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in November 2023, AWE began a 2-year mission to explore the global distribution of AGWs, study the processes controlling their propagation throughout the upper atmosphere, and quantify their impacts on the ionosphere–thermosphere–mesosphere (ITM) system. The AWE science instrument is an ISS–compatible version of the Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM)—a wide field-of-view Shortwave Infrared (SWIR) imager that quantifies gravity wave-induced temperature disturbances in the hydroxyl (OH) airglow layer, which lies near the mesopause at ~87 km altitude. The AMTM’s four identical telescopes make continuous nighttime observations of the P1(2) and P1(4) emission lines of the OH (3,1) band, as well as the atmospheric background simultaneously, from which the OH layer temperature is derived. AWE images are collected once per second, co-added, and processed into temperature swaths using correction algorithms derived from ground calibration test results. Global coverage of the GWs in the OH layer is achieved about every four days, which will enable regional and seasonal studies, as well as characterization of AGW ‘hot spots.’ This paper will present an overview of the AWE mission, including science objectives, measurement technique, instrument design and development, pre- launch performance and environmental testing, data processing, and a brief look at on-orbit science results.

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