Mission

The AIM mission was selected in July 2002 with final approval in May 2004. In mid-2003, Orbital Sciences Corporation was awarded the satellite manufacturing contract for the AIM spacecraft from a university team led by Hampton University with the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) managing satellite development.

Mating of the three stages of the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL has been underway at Vandenberg as of March 2007. AIM will undergo a series of readiness tests to verify its state of health and the instruments will be cleaned and calibrated. Technicians also will partially deploy the craft's solar arrays for illumination testing.

AIM is scheduled to be mated to the Pegasus XL during the second week of April, after which final inspections will be conducted. Approximately one week later, after the test team performs a launch countdown rehearsal and flight simulation, the payload fairing will be installed around the spacecraft.

Two days before launch, the Pegasus rocket with the AIM spacecraft will be transported to the Vandenberg runway where it will be attached beneath the Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft.

The expected mission life of AIM is 26 months.

Spacecraft:

Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC) of Dulles, Virginia, USA is the prime contractor to Hampton University (Center for Atmospheric Sciences/Hampton University) for the spacecraft and payload integration. The AIM mission employs the LeoStar-2 bus of OSC, a 3-axis stabilized zero momentum platform. The Spacecraft structure (cylinder) has a diameter of 1.09 m and a length of 1.4 m. Spacecraft power = 335 W (orbital average) using a fixed GaAs solar array; S/C mass = 210 kg, design life of at least 2 years.

The AIM satellite has three instruments aboard: CIPS, SOFIE and CDE.

1. CIPS is an instrument that will take images of the clouds to determine when and where they form, and to document what they look like.

2. SOFIE will measure the temperature and composition of the mesosphere, which will tell scientists more about the chemistry and movement of air in the mesosphere that might lead to cloud formation or cloud dissipation.

3. CDE will measure how much dust enters the mesosphere from meteors. It is possible that this dust is what water vapor is freezing onto to form PMC’s and thus meteor dust is an important component of cloud formation to understand.

About

Hampton University (HU) is NASA’s main contractor for the AIM mission, but HU will be working along with many other co-investigators at various universities and institutions.

The Explorers Program Office at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. manages this NASA-funded mission. The Center for Atmospheric Sciences at Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia leads the mission. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder built two of the spacecraft's three instruments, manages the mission and will control the satellite after launch. The Space Dynamics Laboratory of Utah State University, Logan, built the third instrument. Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia designed, manufactured and tested the AIM spacecraft.
 

Did you know?

* NASA's SMEX (Small Explorer) program is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for a variety of missions.

* Noctilucent or "night-shining" clouds were first seen in 1885 about two years after the powerful eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, which hurled plumes of ash high into Earth's atmosphere. Crews aboard the International Space Station routinely witness noctilucent clouds when flying over Australia and the tip of South America.

Books:

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