London - Thunderstorms are some of the most spectacular events in nature, yet what we can see from the surface of our planet is only the beginning. There are bizarre goings on in Earth’s upper atmosphere, and a new mission aims to learn more about them. Launched to the International Space Station on Monday, the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) will observe the strange electrical phenomena that occur above thunderstorms.Orbiting at an altitude of just over 400km, the ISS provides the perfect view of Earth’s turbulent weather systems. The electrifying effects of storms are frequently observed from the space station. Yet when lightning strikes downward, something very different is happening above the cloud tops. Known as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs), these unusual features were first spotted by accident in 1989. Minnesota professor John R Winckler was testing a television camera in advance of an upcoming rocket launch, when he realised that two frames showed bright columns of light above a distant storm cloud. The discovery came as a shock to scientists at the time, according to Dr Torsten Neubert, ASIM’s lead scientist. “That really surprised all of us. How come this exists and we didn’t know it? Airline pilots must have known about it - there are some anecdotal descriptions,” the Technical University of Denmark physicist said.

For the better part of a century before TLEs were caught on camera, people who spotted them had been reporting “rocket lightning” or “upward lightning”.

Now in need of names, the phenomena were christened sprites and elves because of their fleeting, mysterious nature.

Yet despite their diminutive monikers, these features are anything but small, and extend tens of kilometres into the atmosphere.