{"id":237574,"date":"2026-05-22T03:19:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/nasas-awe-instrument-completes-mission-to-study-earths-effect-on-space-weather"},"modified":"2026-05-22T03:19:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:19:30","slug":"nasas-awe-instrument-completes-mission-to-study-earths-effect-on-space-weather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/nasas-awe-instrument-completes-mission-to-study-earths-effect-on-space-weather","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s AWE instrument completes mission to study Earth\u2019s effect on space weather"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/nasas-awe-instrument-completes-mission-to-study-earths-effect-on-space-weather.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA\u2019s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.<\/p>\n<p>Installed on the exterior of the International Space Station since November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves, which are giant ripples in the atmosphere caused by strong winds flowing over tall mountains or by violent weather events, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.<\/p>\n<p>The AWE instrument looked for these waves in colorful bands of light in Earth\u2019s atmosphere, called <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-03-atmospheric-mission-orbits.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\">airglow<\/a>. AWE investigated how atmospheric gravity waves propagate upward to space and contribute to space weather\u2014conditions in space that can disrupt satellites, as well as navigation and communications signals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA\u2019s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission. Installed on the exterior of the International Space Station since November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves, which are giant ripples in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-237574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}