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Van Allen Belts

Surprising Third Radiation Belt Found Around Earth

February 28, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter In September of 2012, scientists with the newly launched Van Allen Probes got permission to turn on one of their instruments after only three days in space instead of waiting for weeks, as planned. They wanted to turn on the Relativistic [...]

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Radiation Belt Mission Renamed to Honor James Van Allen

November 9, 2012

The recently launched Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission, which is studying the Van Allen radiation belts, has now been renamed in honor of the late James Van Allen, who discovered the radiation belts encircling Earth in 1958. “James Van Allen was a true pioneer in astrophysics,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator for [...]

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NASA Launches Twin Probes to Study Earth’s Radiation Belts

August 30, 2012

After nearly a week of weather and technical delays, NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) launched in the early morning skies from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 4:05a.m. EDT (08:05 GMT) on Thursday, August 30, 2012. This will be the first twin-spacecraft mission designed to explore our planet’s radiation belts. “Scientists [...]

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Newsreel Footage of Explorer 1

January 31, 2012

Here’s a blast from the past: 54 years ago on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was the first satellite sent into space by the United States. The U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite following the Soviet Union’s successful Sputnik 1 launch on October 4, 1957. The 13-kg (30-pound) Explorerer satellite [...]

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The Van Allen Belts and the Great Electron Escape

January 31, 2012

During the 1950s and just before the great “Space Race” began, scientists like Kristian Birkeland, Carl Stormer, and Nicholas Christofilos had been paying close attention to a theory – one that involved trapped, charged particles in a ring around the Earth. This plasma donut held in place by our planet’s magnetic field was later confirmed [...]

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