Planet Earth: Noctilucent Clouds | International Space Station

Planet Earth: Noctilucent Clouds | International Space Station

Noctilucent clouds, high-altitude clouds visible during the summer months and illuminated when the sun is below Earth's horizon, are pictured from the International Space Station as it orbited 259 miles above the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska. Noctilucent clouds, or night shining clouds, are the highest clouds in Earth's atmosphere, composed of tiny water ice crystals.

Also known as polar mesospheric clouds, noctilucent clouds form in a part of the atmosphere roughly 50 to 86 kilometers (30 to 54 miles) above the surface of our planet. Their high altitude allows them to reflect sunlight after the Sun has set. These clouds long puzzled the researchers that studied them. They wondered how they formed. The clouds’ behavior has become more mysterious over the past two decades as the clouds have begun to shine more brightly and to appear at lower latitudes than they did before.

Scientists recently discovered that polar stratospheric clouds, long known to play an important role in Antarctic ozone destruction, are occurring with increasing frequency in the Arctic. These high altitude clouds form only at very low temperatures and help to destroy ozone in two ways. They provide a surface that converts benign forms of chlorine into reactive, ozone-destroying forms, and they remove nitrogen compounds that moderate the destructive impact of chlorine. In recent years, the atmosphere above the Arctic has been colder than usual, and polar stratospheric clouds have lasted longer. As a result, ozone levels have been decreasing.

Expedition 71 Updates: 

https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/

Expedition 71 Crew

Station Commander: Oleg Kononenko (Russia)

Roscosmos (Russia): Nikolai Chub, Alexander Grebenkin (Russia)

NASA: Tracy Dyson, Matthew Dominick, Mike Barrett, Jeanette Epps

NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore

An international partnership of space agencies provides and operates the elements of the International Space Station (ISS). The principals are the space agencies of the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada. The ISS has been the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.

Learn more about the important research being operated on Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/iss-science 

For more information about STEM on Station:

https://www.nasa.gov/stemonstation

Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM)

Image Credit: NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC)

Image Date: July 16, 2024

#NASA #Space #ISS #Science #Planet #Earth #Atmosphere #Clouds #Noctilucent #NoctilucentClouds #PacificOcean #SpaceTechnology #SpaceLaboratory #Engineering #Astronauts #UnitedStates #Cosmonauts #Russia #Россия #Roscosmos #Роскосмос #HumanSpaceflight #InternationalCooperation #Expedition71 #STEM #Education