Hi My Friends: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) is being designed to help
us understand the sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by
studying the Earth’s radiation belts on various scales of space and
time.
The instruments on NASA’s Living With a Star Program’s (LWS) Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will provide the measurements needed to characterize and quantify the plasma processes that produce very energetic ions and relativistic electrons. The RBSP mission is part of the broader LWS program whose missions were conceived to explore fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system and in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects in the vicinity of Earth and phenomena that could impact solar system exploration. RBSP instruments will measure the properties of charged particles that comprise the Earth’s radiation belts, the plasma waves that interact with them, the large-scale electric fields that transport them, and the particle-guiding magnetic field.
The two RBSP spacecraft will have nearly identical eccentric orbits. The orbits cover the entire radiation belt region and the two spacecraft lap each other several times over the course of the mission. The RBSP in situ measurements discriminate between spatial and temporal effects, and compare the effects of various proposed mechanisms for charged particle acceleration and loss.
The instruments on NASA’s Living With a Star Program’s (LWS) Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will provide the measurements needed to characterize and quantify the plasma processes that produce very energetic ions and relativistic electrons. The RBSP mission is part of the broader LWS program whose missions were conceived to explore fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system and in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects in the vicinity of Earth and phenomena that could impact solar system exploration. RBSP instruments will measure the properties of charged particles that comprise the Earth’s radiation belts, the plasma waves that interact with them, the large-scale electric fields that transport them, and the particle-guiding magnetic field.
The two RBSP spacecraft will have nearly identical eccentric orbits. The orbits cover the entire radiation belt region and the two spacecraft lap each other several times over the course of the mission. The RBSP in situ measurements discriminate between spatial and temporal effects, and compare the effects of various proposed mechanisms for charged particle acceleration and loss.
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Most spacecraft try to avoid the Van Allen Belts, two doughnut-shaped regions around Earth filled with "killer electrons." This morning NASA launched two heavily-shielded spacecraft directly into the belts. The Radiation Belt Storm Probes are on a two-year mission to study the Van Allen Belts and to unravel the mystery of their unpredictability. Credit: Science@NASA
Most spacecraft try to avoid the Van Allen Belts, two doughnut-shaped regions around Earth filled with "killer electrons." This morning NASA launched two heavily-shielded spacecraft directly into the belts. The Radiation Belt Storm Probes are on a two-year mission to study the Van Allen Belts and to unravel the mystery of their unpredictability. Credit: Science@NASA
NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes are flying in Earth orbit after a
successful liftoff and ascent this morning. The probes launched aboard a
United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 4:05 a.m. EDT after a smooth
countdown at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The probes
were released from the rocket's Centaur upper stage one at a time and
sent off into different orbits, kicking off the two-year mission to
study Earth's radiation belts.
"I'm very happy to report that we have two happy spacecraft on orbit," said Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the mission for NASA. "Many thanks to ULA and Launch Services Program for getting us on orbit, giving us a great ride and injecting us in exactly the orbit that we wanted to be in."
During the RBSP mission, the identical twin spacecraft will fly in separate orbits throughout the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts that encircle the Earth. The sun influences the behavior of the radiation belts, which in turn can impact life on Earth and endanger astronauts and spacecraft in orbit.
"Today, 11 years of hard work was realized by the science team as a number of us stood together watching the rocket lift off the pad," said Nicky Fox, RBSP deputy project scientist from APL. "(The spacecraft) are now at home in the Van Allen belts where they belong, and we can all finally breathe out now that solar panels are out on both of them."
The spacecraft will go through a 60-day commissioning period before beginning its prime mission.
"Now that the spacecraft are safely in orbit, the real fun begins," said Mike Luther, deputy associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After the commissioning period, we get to then begin to perform the most detailed study of Earth's radiation belts that's ever been undertaken."
"I'm very happy to report that we have two happy spacecraft on orbit," said Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the mission for NASA. "Many thanks to ULA and Launch Services Program for getting us on orbit, giving us a great ride and injecting us in exactly the orbit that we wanted to be in."
During the RBSP mission, the identical twin spacecraft will fly in separate orbits throughout the inner and outer Van Allen radiation belts that encircle the Earth. The sun influences the behavior of the radiation belts, which in turn can impact life on Earth and endanger astronauts and spacecraft in orbit.
"Today, 11 years of hard work was realized by the science team as a number of us stood together watching the rocket lift off the pad," said Nicky Fox, RBSP deputy project scientist from APL. "(The spacecraft) are now at home in the Van Allen belts where they belong, and we can all finally breathe out now that solar panels are out on both of them."
The spacecraft will go through a 60-day commissioning period before beginning its prime mission.
"Now that the spacecraft are safely in orbit, the real fun begins," said Mike Luther, deputy associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "After the commissioning period, we get to then begin to perform the most detailed study of Earth's radiation belts that's ever been undertaken."
Image above: The Atlas V payload fairing
containing the RBSP spacecraft is lifted at Space Launch Complex-41,
where the booster awaits. Photo credit: NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis
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Image above: Technicians at the
Astrotech payload processing facility prepare the RBSP spacecraft for
encapsulation in the payload fairing. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
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Image above: Spacecraft A, one of two
Radiation Belt Storm Probes, is checked for proper balance during a spin
test. Photo credit: NASA/Charisse Nahser
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RBSP: Fundamental Physics to Benefit Life on Earth, in Space
Encircling the
Earth's equator are two concentric, wide rings of high-intensity
particles known as the Van Allen radiation belts. This dynamic region
changes in response to the sun, with the potential to affect GPS
satellites, satellite television and more.
NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission aims to study this ever-changing environment in greater detail than ever before.
"We live in the atmosphere of the sun. So when the sun sneezes, the Earth catches a cold," explained Nicky Fox, deputy project scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "So whatever is happening on the sun, the Earth will feel an effect and will respond to that changing space weather."
The mission features nearly identical twin probes, each carrying a suite of advanced instruments to help scientists monitor and characterize changes within the radiation belts.
"The Radiation Belt Storm Probes will give us a better understanding of how the radiation belts actually work, and allow us to do a better job of predicting and protecting against the radiation that's up there in the future," said Mission Systems Engineer Jim Stratton, also of APL.
The RBSP mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star program, which is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The APL team built the RBSP spacecraft and will manage the two-year mission for NASA.
The discovery of the radiation belts dates back to the dawn of the space age. Their existence was detected in 1958 by a Geiger counter on NASA's first spacecraft, Explorer 1, built by James Van Allen and his team from the University of Iowa.
Now, more than half a century later, RBSP packs a comprehensive set of instruments designed to look at not only the particles within the radiation belts, but also the plasma waves, electric fields and magnetic fields that transport and guide those particles.
The mission needed two probes, Fox explained, because scientists want to be able to distinguish transient features from those that are there for a longer period, or may be changing.
"If you imagine having two buoys in the ocean, and one goes up, and comes down again, you don't know anything about what caused that to go up and down," Fox said. "If both of them go up, then you know you've got a very big feature that is affecting both of them at the same time. If you one goes up, then the other goes up, you can measure how fast that wave has traveled between them, and what direction it's going into. And if only one goes up and comes down again, then you've got a very, very localized feature that didn't travel anywhere.
"So in order to be able to really understand what is going on, these very fine-scale features in our radiation belts, we have two spacecraft to do that," she said.
The eight-sided probes weigh more than 1,400 pounds each and measure about six feet wide by three feet high. But the electric and magnetic fields sensors extend outward on booms that distance these instruments from the immediate vicinity of the spacecraft, which could generate its own electric and magnetic fields. Data filters and metal shielding on spacecraft electronics offer additional prevention against interference, as well as protection from the intense environment the probes will encounter daily.
"Definitely the biggest challenge that we face is the radiation environment that the probes are going to be flying through," Stratton said. "Most spacecraft try to avoid the radiation belts -- and we're going to be flying right through the heart of them."
RBSP is launching on the tried-and-true Atlas V built by United Launch Alliance.
"NASA has an excellent history with the Atlas V rocket. As a matter of fact, we are 100 percent, six for six, launching on Atlas V," said Tim Dunn, RBSP launch director for NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP). "We have launched missions to Jupiter, Pluto, the sun, the moon, and two missions to Mars."
Based at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, LSP has been involved in prelaunch planning for the RBSP mission for several years.
"The team has been preparing in total for about six years for the RBSP mission. The early planning began that long ago, back in about the 2006 timeframe. The core team came in at about contract award time in March of 2009," Dunn said. "So we've been very heavily involved with RBSP for the last three years."
Rex Engelhardt, LSP's mission manager for RBSP, has been working on the project since 2006. He pointed out that ensuring the separation of both spacecraft from the Centaur upper stage, after launch, required some extra attention. The probes will be deployed one at a time into separate orbits, so the Centaur will spin up, deploy the first probe, stop its spin, and then turn to aim the second probe toward its orbit.
"Then you've got to point it in the right direction, spin it back up again, separate the second (probe), then you've got to spin the Centaur back down again, and quietly back away," Engelhardt said.
Once the probes are placed in their proper orbits, they'll undergo a two-month "commissioning period." This offers the team plenty of time to extend the instrumentation booms, check out the probes' health and safety, and ensure the electronics are working.
"After you launch, after you get through the environments of launch and when you're up there in the space environment, you want to make sure everything's working perfectly," Stratton said. "So that takes about 60 days after launch, and then we'll start our prime mission as soon as that commissioning period is done."
According to Fox, the data from the RBSP mission will allow scientists dramatically improve current models of how the radiation belts form and change in response to the sun.
"That is important because it will allow us to design better spacecraft; we'll be able to protect them better and we also won't do costly overdesign," Fox explained. "It will help us protect astronauts that are out in Earth orbit, and it will benefit the science community by giving us a lot more information about fundamental particle physics."
NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission aims to study this ever-changing environment in greater detail than ever before.
"We live in the atmosphere of the sun. So when the sun sneezes, the Earth catches a cold," explained Nicky Fox, deputy project scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "So whatever is happening on the sun, the Earth will feel an effect and will respond to that changing space weather."
The mission features nearly identical twin probes, each carrying a suite of advanced instruments to help scientists monitor and characterize changes within the radiation belts.
"The Radiation Belt Storm Probes will give us a better understanding of how the radiation belts actually work, and allow us to do a better job of predicting and protecting against the radiation that's up there in the future," said Mission Systems Engineer Jim Stratton, also of APL.
The RBSP mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star program, which is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The APL team built the RBSP spacecraft and will manage the two-year mission for NASA.
The discovery of the radiation belts dates back to the dawn of the space age. Their existence was detected in 1958 by a Geiger counter on NASA's first spacecraft, Explorer 1, built by James Van Allen and his team from the University of Iowa.
Now, more than half a century later, RBSP packs a comprehensive set of instruments designed to look at not only the particles within the radiation belts, but also the plasma waves, electric fields and magnetic fields that transport and guide those particles.
The mission needed two probes, Fox explained, because scientists want to be able to distinguish transient features from those that are there for a longer period, or may be changing.
"If you imagine having two buoys in the ocean, and one goes up, and comes down again, you don't know anything about what caused that to go up and down," Fox said. "If both of them go up, then you know you've got a very big feature that is affecting both of them at the same time. If you one goes up, then the other goes up, you can measure how fast that wave has traveled between them, and what direction it's going into. And if only one goes up and comes down again, then you've got a very, very localized feature that didn't travel anywhere.
"So in order to be able to really understand what is going on, these very fine-scale features in our radiation belts, we have two spacecraft to do that," she said.
The eight-sided probes weigh more than 1,400 pounds each and measure about six feet wide by three feet high. But the electric and magnetic fields sensors extend outward on booms that distance these instruments from the immediate vicinity of the spacecraft, which could generate its own electric and magnetic fields. Data filters and metal shielding on spacecraft electronics offer additional prevention against interference, as well as protection from the intense environment the probes will encounter daily.
"Definitely the biggest challenge that we face is the radiation environment that the probes are going to be flying through," Stratton said. "Most spacecraft try to avoid the radiation belts -- and we're going to be flying right through the heart of them."
RBSP is launching on the tried-and-true Atlas V built by United Launch Alliance.
"NASA has an excellent history with the Atlas V rocket. As a matter of fact, we are 100 percent, six for six, launching on Atlas V," said Tim Dunn, RBSP launch director for NASA's Launch Services Program (LSP). "We have launched missions to Jupiter, Pluto, the sun, the moon, and two missions to Mars."
Based at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, LSP has been involved in prelaunch planning for the RBSP mission for several years.
"The team has been preparing in total for about six years for the RBSP mission. The early planning began that long ago, back in about the 2006 timeframe. The core team came in at about contract award time in March of 2009," Dunn said. "So we've been very heavily involved with RBSP for the last three years."
Rex Engelhardt, LSP's mission manager for RBSP, has been working on the project since 2006. He pointed out that ensuring the separation of both spacecraft from the Centaur upper stage, after launch, required some extra attention. The probes will be deployed one at a time into separate orbits, so the Centaur will spin up, deploy the first probe, stop its spin, and then turn to aim the second probe toward its orbit.
"Then you've got to point it in the right direction, spin it back up again, separate the second (probe), then you've got to spin the Centaur back down again, and quietly back away," Engelhardt said.
Once the probes are placed in their proper orbits, they'll undergo a two-month "commissioning period." This offers the team plenty of time to extend the instrumentation booms, check out the probes' health and safety, and ensure the electronics are working.
"After you launch, after you get through the environments of launch and when you're up there in the space environment, you want to make sure everything's working perfectly," Stratton said. "So that takes about 60 days after launch, and then we'll start our prime mission as soon as that commissioning period is done."
According to Fox, the data from the RBSP mission will allow scientists dramatically improve current models of how the radiation belts form and change in response to the sun.
"That is important because it will allow us to design better spacecraft; we'll be able to protect them better and we also won't do costly overdesign," Fox explained. "It will help us protect astronauts that are out in Earth orbit, and it will benefit the science community by giving us a lot more information about fundamental particle physics."
Anna Heiney
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center
NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center
NASA Launches Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission
WASHINGTON
-- NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), the first twin-spacecraft
mission designed to explore our planet's radiation belts, launched into
the predawn skies at 4:05a.m. EDT Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air
Force Station, Fla.
"Scientists will learn in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles, what causes them to change and how these processes affect the upper reaches of the atmosphere around Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. "The information collected from these probes will benefit the public by allowing us to better protect our satellites and understand how space weather affects communications and technology on Earth."
The two satellites, each weighing just less than 1,500 pounds, comprise the first dual-spacecraft mission specifically created to investigate this hazardous regions of near-Earth space, known as the radiation belts. These two belts, named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, encircle the planet and are filled with highly charged particles. The belts are affected by solar storms and coronal mass ejections and sometimes swell dramatically. When this occurs, they can pose dangers to communications, GPS satellites and human spaceflight.
"We have never before sent such comprehensive and high-quality instruments to study high radiation regions of space," said Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "RBSP was crafted to help us learn more about, and ultimately predict, the response of the radiation belts to solar inputs."
The hardy RBSP satellites will spend the next 2 years looping through every part of both Van Allen belts. By having two spacecraft in different regions of the belts at the same time, scientists finally will be able to gather data from within the belts themselves, learning how they change over space and time. Designers fortified RBSP with special protective plating and rugged electronics to operate and survive within this punishing region of space that other spacecraft avoid. In addition, a space weather broadcast will transmit selected data from those instruments around the clock, giving researchers a check on current conditions near Earth.
"The excitement of seeing the spacecraft in orbit and beginning to perform science measurements is like no other thrill," said Richard Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager at APL. "The entire RBSP team, from across every organization, worked together to produce an amazing pair of spacecraft."
RBSP was lifted into orbit aboard an Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41, as the rocket's plume lit the dark skies over the Florida coast. The first RBSP spacecraft is scheduled to separate from the Atlas rocket's Centaur booster 1 hour, 18 minutes, 52 seconds after launch. The second RBSP spacecraft is set to follow 12 minutes, 14 seconds later. Mission controllers using APL's 60-foot satellite dish will establish radio contact with each probe immediately after separation.
During the next 60 days, operators will power up all flight systems and science instruments and deploy long antenna booms, two of which are more than 54 yards long. Data about the particles that swirl through the belts, and the fields and waves that transport them, will be gathered by five instrument suites designed and operated by teams at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark; the University of Iowa in Iowa City; University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and the University of New Hampshire in Durham; and the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va. The data will be analyzed by scientists across the nation almost immediately.
RBSP is the second mission in NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program to explore aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. APL built the RBSP spacecraft and will manage the mission for NASA. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for launch management. United Launch Alliance provided the Atlas V launch service.
For more information about NASA's RBSP mission, visit:
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
"Scientists will learn in unprecedented detail how the radiation belts are populated with charged particles, what causes them to change and how these processes affect the upper reaches of the atmosphere around Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at Headquarters in Washington. "The information collected from these probes will benefit the public by allowing us to better protect our satellites and understand how space weather affects communications and technology on Earth."
The two satellites, each weighing just less than 1,500 pounds, comprise the first dual-spacecraft mission specifically created to investigate this hazardous regions of near-Earth space, known as the radiation belts. These two belts, named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, encircle the planet and are filled with highly charged particles. The belts are affected by solar storms and coronal mass ejections and sometimes swell dramatically. When this occurs, they can pose dangers to communications, GPS satellites and human spaceflight.
"We have never before sent such comprehensive and high-quality instruments to study high radiation regions of space," said Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "RBSP was crafted to help us learn more about, and ultimately predict, the response of the radiation belts to solar inputs."
The hardy RBSP satellites will spend the next 2 years looping through every part of both Van Allen belts. By having two spacecraft in different regions of the belts at the same time, scientists finally will be able to gather data from within the belts themselves, learning how they change over space and time. Designers fortified RBSP with special protective plating and rugged electronics to operate and survive within this punishing region of space that other spacecraft avoid. In addition, a space weather broadcast will transmit selected data from those instruments around the clock, giving researchers a check on current conditions near Earth.
"The excitement of seeing the spacecraft in orbit and beginning to perform science measurements is like no other thrill," said Richard Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager at APL. "The entire RBSP team, from across every organization, worked together to produce an amazing pair of spacecraft."
RBSP was lifted into orbit aboard an Atlas V 401 rocket from Space Launch Complex-41, as the rocket's plume lit the dark skies over the Florida coast. The first RBSP spacecraft is scheduled to separate from the Atlas rocket's Centaur booster 1 hour, 18 minutes, 52 seconds after launch. The second RBSP spacecraft is set to follow 12 minutes, 14 seconds later. Mission controllers using APL's 60-foot satellite dish will establish radio contact with each probe immediately after separation.
During the next 60 days, operators will power up all flight systems and science instruments and deploy long antenna booms, two of which are more than 54 yards long. Data about the particles that swirl through the belts, and the fields and waves that transport them, will be gathered by five instrument suites designed and operated by teams at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark; the University of Iowa in Iowa City; University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and the University of New Hampshire in Durham; and the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly, Va. The data will be analyzed by scientists across the nation almost immediately.
RBSP is the second mission in NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program to explore aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. APL built the RBSP spacecraft and will manage the mission for NASA. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for launch management. United Launch Alliance provided the Atlas V launch service.
For more information about NASA's RBSP mission, visit:
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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