NASA Selects Space Weather Mission Teams

Four U.S. universities will share $100 million to provide experiments and hardware for a future NASA mission to study near-Earth space radiation.

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.

Called the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, the two-spacecraft mission is to launch in 2012 to study how accumulations of space radiation form and change during space storms.

Space radiation is hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying high altitude polar routes, NASA said. Space weather storms involve constantly changing magnetic and electric fields and gusts of radiation particles that produce intense energy. Such energy can black out long-distance communications over entire continents and disrupt the global navigational system.

Selected teams and experiments for the 2012 mission involve Boston University, the universities of Iowa and Minnesota, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

The mission is part of NASA’s Living with a Star Program, designed to understand how and why the sun varies, how planetary systems respond and the effect on human space and Earth activities.