Credit: NASANASAs AIM mission concluded after over a years of groundbreaking research on Earths upper atmosphere, leaving behind a legacy of clinical discoveries and a wealth of data for future analysis.After 16 years of studying Earths greatest clouds for the benefit of humankind– polar mesospheric clouds– from its orbit some 350 miles above the ground, NASAs Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, mission has actually come to an end.Initially slated for a two-year mission, AIM was extended many times due to its high science return. Multiple attempts to keep power to the spacecraft were made, but no additional information could be collected, so the objective has now ended.Scientific Contributions and Discoveries” AIM was committed to studying the atmospheric region that surrounds between our atmosphere and space,” said AIM objective researcher Diego Janches, of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.” There are still gigabytes upon gigabytes of AIM data to study,” said Cora Randall, AIM deputy principal investigator and senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado.
Credit: NASANASAs AIM objective concluded after over a years of groundbreaking research study on Earths upper atmosphere, leaving behind a tradition of scientific discoveries and a wealth of data for future analysis.After 16 years of studying Earths greatest clouds for the benefit of humanity– polar mesospheric clouds– from its orbit some 350 miles above the ground, NASAs Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere, or AIM, objective has actually come to an end.Initially slated for a two-year objective, AIM was extended various times due to its high science return. Multiple efforts to maintain power to the spacecraft were made, but no additional information might be collected, so the objective has now ended.Scientific Contributions and Discoveries” AIM was committed to studying the climatic area that surrounds in between our environment and area,” stated AIM mission scientist Diego Janches, of NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Dave Hughes” NASAs AIM has actually been an incredibly successful mission,” said Scott Bailey, AIM principal detective and professor at Virginia Tech. The brand-new software patch has actually avoided over a thousand such incidents on the spacecraft since.In 2019, AIMs battery started to decline, but through fantastic effort and resourcefulness, the objective operations group preserved the battery power, making it possible for the spacecraft to continue returning information.” There are still gigabytes upon gigabytes of AIM data to study,” said Cora Randall, AIM deputy principal private investigator and senior research study scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado.