NASA: Satellite studies the clouds

Recently, NASA introduced a spacecraft on a rocket with the primary mission of studying floating mystical clouds 50 miles from Earth.

Noctilucent clouds cluster around the polar regions and are only visible at night, they have appeared more often and become brighter in recent years. Scientists have not found the cause of these changes, but they can find some suggestions for global climate change.

Spacecraft will study ice clouds for two years, trying to find answers to basic questions such as: Why are clouds shaped like that and global warming by humans? cause it? That is the goal of AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) - the Ice research organization in the Middle (the middle layer of the atmosphere).

"We are exploring clouds extracting on the edge of the space," said James Russell, principal investigator at Hampton University, at a news conference.

The Pegasus rocket carries a special plane set at high altitude, which is launched through the Pacific Ocean and travels in an orbit about 370 miles from the earth.

The managers of the delegation were delighted after the spacecraft successfully separated from the rocket. Ground control stations continue to monitor the status of the spacecraft. AIM - George Diller, the AIM speaker, said: "Everything seems to be right when invested a lot."

The Pegasus rocket, built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, featured Virginia Tech icons, where last week 32 students and faculty members died of a terrifying act at a university. One of the delegation's scientists, chief investigator Scott Baily, works at the site.

Of the $ 140 million, AIM will be used to take pictures of clouds above sea level and measure their size, pressure, temperature and moisture content.

Night-glowing clouds were first discovered in the 1880s shortly after the volcano erupted on a large scale on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa. Space-based satellites have been periodically observing clouds since the 1980s, but AIM's spacecraft is the first satellite to be used entirely for research.