NASA Unveils First Data from AWE Mission Exploring Atmospheric Gravity Waves

After the International Space Station completed its 3,000th orbit with NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) aboard, scientists have unveiled the mission’s inaugural batch of scientific data. This treasure trove promises to deepen our understanding of how subtle shifts in Earth’s atmosphere spark disturbances and how these ripples affect both ground-based and space-bound technologies.

“This offers an entirely fresh perspective on atmospheric gravity waves, one we couldn’t glimpse before,” said Ludger Scherliess, the mission’s lead.

Now open to the public, the dataset brims with over 5 million individual images of the atmosphere’s nocturnal glow—known as airglow—alongside observations of gravity waves captured by AWE’s quartet of cameras. It also includes measurements of temperature and glow intensity, both of the ambient air and the waves themselves.

Atmospheric gravity waves, sculpted by weather patterns and Earth’s terrain, have been studied for decades, mostly from terrestrial observatories. “With AWE, we’re now able to measure their energy and momentum on a near-global scale, spanning tens to thousands of kilometers,” Scherliess emphasized.

Mounted on the ISS’s exterior, the AWE instrument—also dubbed the Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM)—is a four-telescope system. With each orbit, it scans a 11,200-kilometer swath of Earth’s surface, tracking the journey of gravity waves from the lower atmosphere into space. By gauging the brightness of airglow at specific wavelengths, AMTM crafts temperature maps of both the atmosphere and the waves, unveiling their energy and motion.

To tame this flood of data, students and researchers at Utah State University built custom software to tackle unprecedented challenges. “Reflections from clouds and the surface can muddy some images,” Scherliess noted. “We had to filter out those distortions, sync the four telescopes’ outputs, and cut through interference from the ISS’s solar panels, moonlight, and city lights.”

In the coming months, scientists will dive into seasonal shifts in gravity wave activity across the globe, with a keen eye on their role in bridging terrestrial and space weather. These interactions sway satellite communications, navigation, and tracking. “Today’s society leans heavily on satellites, from GPS to beyond,” Scherliess observed. “AWE’s insights will sharpen our forecasts of space weather disruptions.”