Latest Van Allen radiation belt Stories

A breakthrough by a team of British, US and French scientists will help protect astronauts, spacecraft and satellites from radiation hazards experienced in space. Reporting in the journal Nature this week, the team describe how their study of rare and unusual space storms provided a unique opportunity to test conflicting theories about the behaviour of high energy particles in the Van Allen radiation belts* - a volatile region 12000 miles (19,000 km) above the Earth. Lead author, Dr Richard...

NASA -- When lightning makes your favorite AM radio station crackle and pop, it is also cleaning up a radiation hazard overhead.Lightning in clouds only a few miles above the ground clears a safe zone in the radiation belts thousands of miles above the Earth, according to new NASA research. The unexpected new result resolves a forty-year-old debate as to how the safe zone is formed and is the second big lightning result in the last month.The safe zone, called the "Van Allen Belt...

NASA -- The beauty of science is that nothing is for certain. There are times when scientists think they have something figured out and then nature throws them for a loop. Just such an event happened last fall when the Sun erupted in some massive, record-shattering explosions that hurled billion of tons of electrified gas toward Earth. Scientists realize that space is dangerous for unprotected satellites and astronauts, but they thought that they had found a small safe zone around Earth's...