According to NASA’s press release a few days ago, after 15 years in space, the AIM mission was terminated due to technical malfunctions. Here are the details:
NASA launched the AIM mission in 2007 to study night-glowing clouds, sometimes known as fossilized clouds. The AIM spacecraft has gathered invaluable data for scientists from its observatory, located about 600 meters above the planet’s surface. Recently, however, NASA announced in a press release that it was ending its AIM mission.
AIM Spacecraft Now Glides Into Oblivion
Data collected thanks to the AIM spacecraft, originally built in 2007 for a two-year mission, has helped 379 scientific studies, including a recent 2018 study that found that methane emissions from human-caused climate change cause deaths at night.
However, although the battery problems that first started in 2019 were somehow resolved by NASA, the battery problem has recently occurred again. That’s why NASA ended the AIM mission. For AIM no longer responding to NASA, the AIM team will continue to monitor AIM’s communications for two weeks, just in case the spacecraft can restart and transmit a signal.
