The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) instrument, mounted outside the International Space Station, has led to many groundbreaking results in recent years about gamma-ray flashes coming from thunderstorms. A slew of new discoveries may also show up in the years to come, as the ASIM mission has now been extended through 2021! Being designed for a two-year mission, ASIM was originally expected to be shut down this summer. The ASIM project is under the direction of ESA and is a collaboration between DTU (Denmark), University of Bergen (Norway) and the University of Valencia (Spain).
In January of this year, the exciting results from ASIM resulted in an illustration of gamma-ray flashes on the front cover of Science:
