NASA Selects Teams for Space Weather Mission and Studies

NASA Selects Teams for Space Weather Mission and Studies

Four university teams will share $100 million to provide experiments and supporting hardware for a future NASA mission to study near-Earth space radiation. This type of radiation is hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying high altitude polar routes. The teams will initially use $4.2 million to perform a one-year cost, management and technical study prior to assembling and testing their scientific payload for the mission. The anticipated lifetime cost of payload development is $96 million.

Called the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, the two-spacecraft mission is scheduled for launch in 2012. The mission will study how accumulations of space radiation form and change during space storms. Space weather storms involve constantly changing magnetic and electric fields and gusts of radiation particles that produce intense energy. This energy can black out long-distance communications over entire continents and disrupt the global navigational system.

“This research will provide information to aid those working in this environment to respond proactively to space radiation events, rather than reactively,” said NASA’s Heliophysics Division director Dick Fisher. NASA also has selected three teams to share approximately $2.3 million to conduct studies for small missions that will augment the 2012 mission. NASA will review the studies and select one investigation for continued development.

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