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APL to build NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY NEWS RELEASE Posted: May 25, 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., will develop and operate twin NASA spacecraft to study how the sun interacts with Earth's radiation belts. Part of NASA's Living With a Star Program, the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will determine how varying inputs of solar energy form or change populations of relativistic electrons and ions in the Earth's radiation belts -- the doughnut-shaped bands of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field that extend some 20,000 miles around our planet. After launch, scheduled for 2012, the RBSP spacecraft will measure the distributions of charged particles as well as the electric and magnetic fields that energize, transport or remove the particles within these belts. Detailed design of the probes will begin this summer, after NASA selects the spacecraft's science instruments. The mission's science results will provide the understanding needed to predict potentially hazardous space weather effects, much in the same way we forecast weather on Earth. Furthermore, observations from the spacecraft will be used to improve the characterization of planetary space environments. Increased knowledge of the space environment and effects of space weather will permit better design and operations of new technology on Earth and in space. "For the first time, several spacecraft will simultaneously watch activity on the sun and the reaction to that activity within Earth's radiation belts," says Ken Potocki, APL's Living With a Star programs manager. "These probes will have to work in an incredibly difficult radiation environment where charging and discharging will occur, a lot like flying into an electrical storm. But our team looks forward to the engineering and design challenge. We know how important these data will be." Radiation Belt Storm Probes is the first project assigned to APL under a 12-year contract, awarded in December 2000, to design, develop and operate missions in the Living With a Star and Solar Terrestrial Probes programs. The Lab's experience in developing spacecraft to study the sun-Earth relationship includes the TIMED satellite, currently examining solar effects on Earth's upper atmosphere, and the twin STEREO probes, which after launch this summer will begin taking the first 3-D images of solar events called coronal mass ejections, which can blast billions of tons of the sun's atmosphere into space and trigger severe magnetic storms when they collide with Earth. APL spacecraft have flown into the charged-particle environment before: The Charge Composition Explorer, one of three spacecraft in the international Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) program of the 1980s, measured the composition of magnetospheric particles as well as the variations of these particles over space and time. All told, APL has built 62 spacecraft and more than 150 space instruments. The Living With a Star (LWS) Program Office at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., has overall program responsibility for the Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission as well as the first LWS mission --the Solar Dynamics Observatory -- planned for launch in 2008. The Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), a not-for-profit laboratory and division of The Johns Hopkins University, conducts research and development primarily for national security and for nondefense projects of national and global significance. |
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As night fell over Kennedy Space Center on May 19, space shuttle Discovery reached launch pad 39B to complete the slow journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Discovery will be traveling much faster in a few weeks when it blasts off to the International Space Station.
The November 1985 flight of space shuttle Atlantis began with a rare nighttime blastoff. The seven-member crew, including a Mexican payload specialist, spent a week in orbit deploying three communications satellites for Australia, Mexico and the U.S. And a pair of high-visibility spacewalks were performed to demonstrate techniques for building large structures in space. The crew narrates the highlights of STS-61B in this post-flight crew film presentation.
Eight astronauts, the largest crew in history, spent a week in space during the fall of 1985 aboard shuttle Challenger for mission STS-61A, the first flight dedicated to the German Spacelab. The crew worked in the Spacelab D-1 laboratory conducting a range of experiments, including a quick-moving sled that traveled along tracks in the module. A small satellite was ejected from a canister in the payload bay as well. The astronauts narrate the highlights of the mission in this post-flight film.
Perched atop a trailer-like transporter, space shuttle Discovery was moved May 12 from its hangar to the 52-story Vehicle Assembly Building for mating to its external fuel tank and twin solid rocket boosters in preparation for the STS-121 mission.
The U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inducted its 2006 class of shuttle commanders Henry Hartsfield, Brewster Shaw and Charles Bolden. The ceremony was held inside the Saturn 5 museum at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory satellites (STEREO) arrive via truck at the Astrotech processing facility outside Kennedy Space Center for final pre-launch testing and preparations. They will be launched this summer aboard a Boeing Delta 2 rocket to provide the first 3-D "stereo" views of the sun and solar wind.