The Occultation Wave Limb Sounder for Thermospheric Gravity Wave Studies (OWLS)

Gravity waves (GWs) are atmospheric waves that commonly arise from irregularities in the fluid motion, such as wind flow over topography (e.g. mountain or lee waves) or from deep atmospheric convection. It is generally accepted that GWs play an important role in the energy budget of Earth's thermosphere, but the degree to which GW forcing influences the thermosphere is still poorly understood. The larger scientific community has realized the importance of the topic, leading the NAS 2013 Decadal Survey of Solar and Space Physics to put forth the Challenge "Understand how forcing from ... GWs influences the ... thermosphere". Much of the current understanding of the influence of GWs on the thermosphere comes from numerical modeling, and the topic has become an area of increasing focus over the past decade. Although numerical GW models are only sparsely constrained by observations, both models and observations show a tendency for GWs to deposit energy at high latitudes and altitudes. However, different modeling frameworks have yielded substantially different results, creating some controversy with regard to the extent of GW influence on thermospheric temperature that remains unresolved due to a dearth of observations. The Occultation Wave Limb Sounder (OWLS) is designed to address disparities in the current understanding of GW effects on the thermosphere by answering the two science questions: (1)Are regions of high GW potential energy in the high latitude thermosphere positively correlated with regions of temperature increase or decrease? And, (2) Is there a transition in dominant vertical wavelengths of GWs in the middle thermosphere from those reported in the MLT region, and does this vary with season and local time? OWLS measures thermospheric parameters via solar occultations, where the absorption of sunlight by atmospheric gases is used to infer atmospheric properties. OWLS consists of two instruments, the Extreme Ultraviolet Occultation Photometers (EUV-OP) and the Compact Solstice (C-SOL) that, when combined, provide the needed measurements for characterizing the influence of GWs on upper atmospheric temperature. Simply put, CSOL measures GW activity in the lower and middle thermosphere and EUV-OP measures thermospheric temperature in the middle and upper thermosphere. When combined, the influence of GWs on thermospheric temperature can be directly measured. OWLS is a ~6U instrument payload, and has been offered a free flight of opportunity on the INSPIRESat-3 MicroSat to be built at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. INSPIRESat-3 will be launched into a polar orbit by the Indian Space Research Organization. The orbit will be optimized in order to observe high latitude GWs, with a minimum mission duration of 1 year. Measurements of GWs in the thermosphere are exceedingly rare. As such, OWLS will make discovery-level scientific observations. Further, these observations will provide the needed information to resolve a current controversy in the understanding of GWs on the thermosphere. Together, these factors show OWLS meets the High Risk and High Impact criteria sought after by the H-FORT Program. The OWLS mission will build spaceflight heritage on the compact Camera And Processor (cCAP) detector technology developed at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) with features beneficial for spaceflight, making it applicable to a wide array of potential NASA missions. As such, OWLS also meets the H-FORT objective to advance the technology readiness level of future space flight sensors.

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