Apr 25 2007
From The Space Library
NASA launched its Aeronomy of Ice in Mesosphere (AIM) satellite aboard a Pegasus-XL rocket dropped from a Stargazer-L-1011 aircraft. The Stargazer launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 21:26 (UT). NASA had designed AIM to study noctilucent clouds (NLCs) in the polar mesosphere. Observers can only see NLCs at night. Shortly before the mission, these clouds had appeared more often and had grown brighter. Observers had first seen NLCs in the 1880s, soon after the massive volcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa. Space- based satellites had periodically observed the clouds since the 1980s. AIM was the first spacecraft devoted to the study of NLCs. Scientists hoped to answer basic questions about why the clouds form and whether human-caused global warming was responsible for the recent changes. AIM carried three instruments: the Solar Occultation for Ice Experiment (SOFIE) would remotely sense the gases that condense to NLCs; the Cosmic Dust Experiment (CDE) would serve as an in situ sampler of the cosmic dust over the NLCs; and the Cloud Imaging and Particle Size (CIPS) experiment, a panoramic ultraviolet (UV) imager of the NLCs operating in the 265-nanometer-wavelength band, would provide the morphology of the clouds in both hemispheres.
Spacewarn Bulletin, no. 642; NASA, “NASA’s AIM Mission Soars to the Edge of Space,” news release 07-92, 25 April 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/apr/HQ_07092_AIM_launch.html (accessed 16 February 2010); Associated Press, “NASA Launches Satellite To Study Clouds,” 26 April 2007.
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