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By NASA
“I was born and raised in Kenya and come from a very humble background. I’m one of nine kids and the third born, meaning that I started responsibilities very early because we had to help our mother. Almost every two to three years, she had a baby, so you can imagine she was a very, very strong woman and powerful, too. When I think about that past, she is the person, and my father as well, who taught us that we can overcome any obstacle. It doesn’t matter what it is.
“I remember going to school without fees, and they would send me home. One time, when I was complaining about being sent home because of my lack of school fees, [my mother] could see I was affected by all this. She told me, ‘Those kids you see out there that look like they come from higher, well-off families came to this world the same way you came. So, you are no different than them. Don’t look at the material wealth and think you are less than them.’
“That’s the background that shaped me. It instilled a sense of believing in yourself. Anyone you see on the streets, their color or background doesn’t matter; we all come into this world the same way. You’re equipped with skills, so find your passion and go for it.
“When I look at that background, it’s the one that has helped me come this far.”
– Dr. Charles Gatebe, Chief of Atmospheric Science Branch, NASA’s Ames Research Center
Image Credit: NASA / Brandon Torres
Interviewer: NASA / Tahira Allen
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By European Space Agency
When future astronauts explore Mars’s polar regions, they will see a green glow lighting up the night sky. For the first time, a visible nightglow has been detected in the martian atmosphere by ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission.
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By NASA
4 min read
AWE Launching to Space Station to Study Atmospheric Waves via Airglow
NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, mission is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in November 2023, where it will make use of a natural, ethereal glow in Earth’s sky to study waves in our planet’s atmosphere.
Built by Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory in North Logan, Utah, AWE will be mounted on the exterior of the space station. From this perch, AWE will stare down toward Earth, tracking undulations in the air known as atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs).
Primarily originating in the lowest level of the atmosphere, AGWs may be caused by strong weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, or even thunderstorms. These weather events can momentarily push pockets of high-density air upwards into the atmosphere before the air sinks back down. This up-and-down bobbing often leaves behind distinctive ripples patterns in the clouds.
This photo shows examples of cloud patterns caused by atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). Warmer, denser air from lower in the atmosphere holds more water, so as weather events like wind and storms push those pockets of air to higher altitudes, that water forms clouds at the crests of those waves. Courtesy Alexa Halford; used with permission But AGWs continue all the way to space, where they contribute to what’s known as space weather – the tumultuous exchange of energy in the area surrounding our planet that can disrupt satellite and communications signals. AWE will measure AGWs at an atmospheric layer that begins some 54 miles (87 kilometers) in altitude, known as the mesopause.
“This is the first time that AGWs, especially the small-scale ones, will be measured globally at the mesopause, the gateway to the space,” said Michael Taylor, professor of physics at Utah State University and principal investigator for the mission. “More importantly, this is the first time we will be able to quantify the impacts of AGWs on space weather.”
This image taken from the International Space Station shows swaths of airglow hovering in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA’s new Atmospheric Waves Experiment will observe airglow from a perch on the space station to help scientists understand, and ultimately improve forecasts of, space weather changes in the upper atmosphere. NASA At the mesopause, where AWE will make its measurements, AGWs are revealed by colorful bands of light in our atmosphere known as airglow. AWE will “see” these waves by recording variations of airglow in infrared light, a wavelength range too long for human eyes to see. At these altitudes our atmosphere dips to its coldest temperatures – reaching as low as -150 degrees Fahrenheit (-101 degrees Celsius) – and the faint glow of infrared light is at its brightest.
By watching that infrared airglow grow brighter and dimmer as waves move through it, AWE will enable scientists to compute the size, power, and dispersion of AGWs like never before. It was also designed to see smaller AGWs, detecting short-scale ripples in airglow that previous missions would miss.
“AWE will be able to resolve waves at finer horizontal scales than what satellites can usually see at those altitudes, which is part of what makes the mission unique,” said Ruth Lieberman, AWE mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
This artist’s conception depicts AWE scanning the atmosphere from aboard the International Space Station. AWE will measure variations in infrared airglow to track atmospheric gravity waves as they move up from the lower atmosphere into space. Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory From its vantage point on the space station, AWE’s Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper (AMTM) instrument will scan the mesopause below it. AWE’s AMTM consists of four identical telescopes, which together comprise a wide-field-of-view imaging radiometer, an instrument that measures the brightness of light at specific wavelength ranges. The relative brightness of different wavelengths can be used to create temperature maps, which in turn reveal how AGWs are moving through the atmosphere. It will be the most thorough study of AGWs and their effects on the upper atmosphere ever conducted.
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From its unique vantage point on the International Space Station, NASA’s Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) will look directly down into Earth’s atmosphere to study how gravity waves travel through the upper atmosphere. Data collected by AWE will enable scientists to determine the physics and characteristics of atmospheric gravity waves and how terrestrial weather influences the ionosphere, which can affect communication with satellites. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab As a payload headed to the space station, AWE was required to hold four crucial safety reviews. The mission was successfully certified as a station payload at its last review in July 2023. Part of this certification involved “sharp edge” testing with astronaut gloves to ensure safety during AWE’s installation and maintenance on the exterior of the space station.
AWE is the first NASA mission to attempt this type of science to provide insight into how terrestrial and space weather interactions may affect satellite communications and tracking in orbit.
Following AWE’s installation on the International Space Station, the team’s focus will be to share the instrument’s data and results with the science community and the public. More information about AWE is available on the mission website: https://www.awemission.org/.
By J. Titus Stupfel, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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By NASA
3 Min Read New Software Enables Atmospheric Modeling with Greater Resolution
– Credits:
Randall Martin / Washington University PROJECT
High Performance GEOS-Chem
SNAPSHOT
An ESTO investment in software optimization helps researchers and citizen scientists model air quality and greenhouse gases with greater resolution, allowing them to better understand how global atmospheric trends impact local areas.
A data visualization describing atmospheric NO2 concentrations, produced using High Performance GEOS-Chem Image credit: Randall Martin / Washington University Next-generation software is making it easier for researchers, policy makers, and citizen scientists to model air quality and greenhouse gases using NASA meteorological data.
This novel software, “High Performance GEOS-Chem,” uses equations representing the Earth’s atmospheric chemistry and boundary conditions from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observation System (GEOS) to represent global atmospheric chemistry across three dimensions at a horizontal spatial resolution of 12 kilometers by 12 kilometers per pixel—an area about one-fifth the size of New York City.
For comparison, the original GEOS-Chem model that was developed in 2001 only produced global simulations at a spatial resolution of about 200 by 250 square kilometers – an area about twice as large as the entire state of New Jersey.
With this improved resolution, researchers interested in air quality and atmospheric chemistry in specific communities can use models, simulations, and visualizations built with NASA data to better understand how global atmospheric trends impact local areas.
GEOS-Chem is an open-source model freely accessible here. More information about High Performance Geos-Chem – including manuals and tutorials – can be found here.
“This new generation of High Performance GEOS-Chem offers major advancements for ease of use, computational performance, versatility, resolution, and accuracy,” said Randall Martin, a professor at Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering and Primary Investigator for the High Performance GEOS-Chem project.
In a recent technical demonstration of their improved GEOS-Chem software, Martin and his team showed two images mapping tropospheric nitrogen dioxide – a pollutant typically produced by burning fossil fuels.
The image produced with High Performance GEOS-Chem featured 200 million more grid cells than the image produced with the original GEOS-Chem software. In other words, High Performance GEOS-Chem creates images more resolute by a factor of about 200.
“We’re really excited. Many features can be examined that aren’t resolved at all at the coarser resolution,” said Martin.
For researchers interested in global air quality and atmospheric composition with local resolution, this new generation of the High Performance GEOS-Chem marks the beginning of a new era for creating descriptive models.
Two visualizations using the same data generated by High Performance GEOS-Chem (top) and the original GEOS-Chem software (bottom). High Performance GEOS-Chem created an image more resolute than the original GEOS-Chem software by a factor of 200. (Image credit: Randall Martin / Washington University) Martin and his team added a number of technological innovations to High Performance GEOS-Chem. In particular, they incorporated a cubed-sphere computation grid into their GEOS-Chem software, reducing noise at the poles and allowing for higher resolution.
High Performance GEOS-Chem also includes a cloud computing capability. This spreads the resource-intensive computation work of generating detailed atmospheric models across dispersed computing nodes, such as Amazon Web Services.
Martin and his team pride themselves on ensuring GEOS-Chem remains an open and accessible tool for anyone interested in simulating atmospheric composition. Their website includes a full suite of tutorial videos, manuals, and guides for using GEOS-Chem effectively.
“NASA enabled us to develop this new generation of GEOS-Chem that has both the additional technical performance and offers the ease of use that this large community requires,” said Martin.
Future iterations of GEOS-Chem could feature further improvements. Developing a better user interface and increasing the modularity of GEOS-Chem are just a few objectives Martin and his team have in mind.
NASA’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST), a part of NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), funded this program.
PROJECT LEAD
Randall Martin, Washington University in St. Louis
SPONSORING ORGANIZATION
Earth Science Division’s Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program
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By NASA
iss070e001516 (Sept. 30, 2023) — A full Moon is pictured from the International Space Station. The Moon lingers to the left of the image, with a horizon of Earth’s blue glow splitting the image nearly in half, blending into the black of space.View the full article
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