STATUS: 11.28.2016

Instrument Status:

The AIM Flight Operations Team (FOT) was presented with a NASA Group Achievement Award on November 9th at NASA HQ.  Dave Welch, the AIM Flight Director at LASP, accepted the award on behalf of the LASP.

AIM recently recovered from an anomaly with the autonomous attitude control system.  This anomaly caused the spacecraft to transition to Contingency mode. Due to the nature of this anomaly which, due to the high beta-angle orientation that AIM is in currently, caused the coarse sun sensors to provide noisy data at eclipse entry, other issues occurred which required turning off the CIPS instrument and finally resulted in an under-voltage situation. The AIM FOT loaded patches to the spacecraft via the alternate commanding mechanism and fully recovered the observatory on October 24.  Since the recovery, all systems are operating nominally.

CIPS:

NASA’s AIM Observes Early Noctilucent Ice Clouds Over Antarctica
Article Published: December 2, 2016
www.nasa.gov

AIM studies noctilucent clouds in order to better understand the mesosphere, and its connections to other parts of the atmosphere, weather and climate. We observe them seasonally, during summer in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. This is when the mesosphere is most humid, with water vapor wafting up from lower altitudes. Additionally, this is also when the mesosphere is the coldest place on Earth – dropping as low as minus 210 degrees Fahrenheit – due to seasonal air flow patterns.

An artist's rendition of the AIM spacecraft in orbit above Earth.

Credits: NASA

This year, AIM saw the start of noctilucent cloud season on Nov. 17, 2016 – tying with the earliest start yet in the AIM record of the Southern Hemisphere. Scientists say this corresponds to an earlier seasonal change at lower altitudes. Winter to summer changes in the Antarctic lower atmosphere sparked a complex series of responses throughout the atmosphere – one of which is an earlier noctilucent cloud season. In the Southern Hemisphere, AIM has observed seasons beginning anywhere from Nov. 17 to Dec. 16.

Since its 2007 launch, AIM data has shown us that changes in one region of the atmosphere can effect responses in another distinct, and sometimes distant, region. Scientists call these relationships atmospheric teleconnections. Now, due to natural precession, the spacecraft’s orbit is evolving, allowing the measurement of atmospheric gravity waves that could be contributing to the teleconnections.

AIM is a NASA-funded mission managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and led by the AIM principal investigator from the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia.

The AIM mission is a part of
NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum.