New Findings, New Enigmas:
NASA’s Van Allen Probes
Begin their Exploration of the
Radiation Belts
Mission overview: two spacecraft that target key
radiation belt regions with variable spacing
•
2 identically-instrumented spacecraft for space/time separation.
•
Spacecraft lap twice per quadrant (4-5 laps/year) for simultaneous
observations over a range of s/c separations.
•
600 km perigee to 5.8 RE geocentric
apogee for full radiation belts sampling.
•
Orbital cadences (9 hr) faster than
relevant magnetic storm time scales.
•
2-year mission for precession to all local
time positions and interaction regions.
•
Low inclination (10°) to access all
magnetically trapped particles
•
Sunward spin axis for full particle pitch
angle and dawn-dusk electric field
sampling.
•
Space Weather broadcast
Sun
The Van Allen Probes Mission Objective is
Important and its Impacts are Broad
•
Objective:
Provide understanding, ideally to the point of predictability, of how
populations of relativistic electrons and penetrating ions in space form or
change in response to variable inputs of energy from the Sun.
•
Impacts:
1. Understand fundamental radiation
processes operating throughout the
universe.
2. Understand Earth’s radiation belts
and related regions that pose
hazards to human and robotic
explorers.
3. Resolve decades-old scientific
mysteries of how these particles
become energized to such high
levels.
5.0- 3
Intensities of Earth’s dynamic
radiation belts
Today’s Panel Members
•
Daniel Baker
– Principal Investigator, Van Allen Probes
Relativistic Electron Proton Telescope
(REPT); part of the Energetic Particle,
Composition, and Thermal Plasma
Suite
– Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics (LASP) at the University of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA
•
Craig Kletzing
– Principal Investigator, Van Allen Probes
Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument
Suite and Integrated Science
(EMFISIS)
– Department of Physics and Astronomy
at the University of Iowa, Iowa City,
Iowa, USA
•
Joseph Mazur
– Principal Investigator, Van Allen Probes
Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS)
– Aerospace Corporation, Chantilly,
Virginia, USA
Unprecedented instrumentation
making measurements in the heart
of the radiation belts
EMFISIS
Magnetometer
EFW
Spin
Plane
Wire
Boom
EFW
Axial
Boom
EMFISIS
Search
Coil
ECT/REPT
RPS