“Whirls and swirls of icy fare, and wispy feathers in the air, and bands and billows everywhere…” While these words might be reminiscent of a 1960s song, they in fact describe clouds that are being studied by the NASA Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission. Poetically referred to as “noctilucent” or “night-shining” clouds, they are also known as polar mesospheric clouds because they appear at high latitudes in the summertime mesosphere far above the Earth, on the edge of space. This talk will summarize some of the scientific highlights of the AIM mission, and will explain how the investigations have led to an increasing realization of the extent to which distant regions of the atmosphere are linked together.

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