Latest Ionosphere Stories

NASA A NASA-funded sounding rocket mission will launch from an atoll in the Pacific in the next few weeks to help scientists better understand and predict the electrical storms in Earth's upper atmosphere. These storms can interfere with satellite communication and global positioning signals. The mission, called EVEX, for the Equatorial Vortex Experiment, will launch two rockets for a twelve-minute journey through the equatorial ionosphere above the South Pacific. The launch window for...

University of California, Berkeley NASA has awarded the University of California, Berkeley, up to $200 million to build a satellite to determine how Earth’s weather affects weather at the edge of space, in hopes of improving forecasts of extreme “space weather” that can disrupt global positioning satellites (GPS) and radio communications. The satellite mission, called the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), will be designed, built and operated by scientists at UC Berkeley’s...

NASA On April 16, 2008, a suite of NASA instruments was launched into space to study a unique region of Earth’s upper atmosphere: the electrically charged region called the ionosphere. The instruments, known collectively as CINDI (Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation), fly aboard an Air Force Research Laboratory satellite called C/NOFS (Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System) to study this region that hovers some 60 to 400 miles above Earth. The ionosphere is...

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has selected a new satellite mission and a new space-based instrument to begin development as part of the agency's Heliophysics Explorer Program. The projects will provide space observations to study Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission, led by Thomas Immel of the University of California, Berkeley, will probe the extreme...

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory U.S. Naval Research Laboratory research physicists and engineers from the Plasma Physics Division, working at the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitter facility, Gakona, Alaska, successfully produced a sustained high density plasma cloud in Earth's upper atmosphere. "Previous artificial plasma density clouds have lifetimes of only ten minutes or less," said Paul Bernhardt, Ph.D., NRL Space Use and Plasma Section. "This higher...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The world was on edge earlier this month when North Korea detonated an underground nuclear explosion (UNE) meant to showcase to the world community the abilities of this beleaguered nation. In a recent story published in The Guardian, reports surfaced North Korea is planning two additional nuclear tests just this year. UNEs were once commonplace, giving the testing nation the knowledge surrounding their nuclear capability. The US...

When talking about lightning, appearances of different lightning which occur along with thunderstorms will emerge in the minds of the people and these lightning occur in the troposphere. However, in addition to lightning in the troposphere, there are kinds of lightning discharges which occur above the thunderstorms. Up to now, lightning discharges above storms include sprite, elves (Emissions of Light and VLF perturbation due to EMP Sources, elves), Blue jet and Gigantic jet etc, and all of...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online To study charge exchange, a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space, three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera. It is rare to have researchers from such diverse disciplines as heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science teaming up, but that's exactly what happened at...

[ Watch the Video: What is Venus? ] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online At the very edges of the Earth’s atmosphere, where the Earth’s magnetic field begins, solar radiation strips electrons from the tenuous gas that is slowly leaking into space. This region, known as the ionosphere is famously responsible for allowing terrestrial radio transmissions over great distances. During World War II, for example, radio operators would “bounce” signals off...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Weather has always affected our lives, but we are increasingly reliant on technology that can be disrupted by space weather. Geomagnetic storms, which are major disturbances of the magnetosphere, cause high altitude flights to be rerouted, costing many thousands of dollars per flight; cause GPS errors of up to 151 feet; and affect the International Space Station and satellites. Geomagnetic storms and other space weather...