As the year edges toward winter and meteor showers streak across December’s long nights, this ISSI International Team 580 is looking upward: to a region of the atmosphere that is as mysterious as it is beautiful. Their project explores the mesosphere–lower thermosphere (MLT), a thin atmospheric shell at around 80–100 km altitude. Too high for aircraft and balloons, but too low for satellites to provide direct observations. This makes the MLT one of the least explored parts of the Earth’s atmosphere. However, it is a “home” of meteors as they flare into view…
ISSI International Team 551 convened twice in Bern to explore an innovative frontier in space exploration: the non-planetary science potential of future missions to Uranus and Neptune. These ice giants, the least explored planets in the Solar System, offer an unparalleled opportunity to push the boundaries of planetary science—and, as the team demonstrates, the broader field of astrophysics.
