What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays!

3 min read What’s Made in a Thunderstorm and Faster Than Lightning? Gamma Rays! A flash of lightning. A roll of thunder. These are normal stormy sights and sounds. But sometimes, up above the clouds, stranger things happen. Our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has spotted bursts of gamma rays – some of the highest-energy forms of light in the universe – coming from thunderstorms. Gamma rays are usually found coming from objects with crazy extreme physics like neutron stars and black holes. So why is Fermi seeing them come from thunderstorms? About a thousand times a…

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AWE Launching to Space Station to Study Atmospheric Waves via Airglow

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…

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