Radiation Belt Storm Probes

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 This article or section documents a scheduled or expected spaceflight.
Details may change as the launch date approaches or more information becomes available.
Radiation Belt Storm Probes
Organization NASA
Major contractors Applied Physics Laboratory
Mission type Two Earth orbiters operating within Earth's radiation belts
Launch date Currently 2012
Launch vehicle EELV Class
Mission duration 2-years
Webpage RBSP at APL
Mass <1500 kg for both
Orbital elements
Inclination ~10 degrees
Orbital period ~9 hours
Apoapsis ~5.8 Earth Radii
Periapsis ~700 kilometers

The Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) is a NASA mission under the Living With a Star (LWS) program. The goal of the LWS program is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to effectively address those aspects of the connected Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The mission of RBSP is to gain scientific understanding (to the point of predictability) of how populations of relativistic electrons and ions in space form or change in response to changes in solar activity and the solar wind.

Contents

[edit] General

The RBSP mission is currently scheduled for 2011. It is currently in the early concept formulation phase of mission development. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the overall Living With a Star program of which RBSP is a project, along with Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The Applied Physics Laboratory is responsible for the overall implementation of RBSP. The primary mission is scheduled to last 2 years , with expendables expected to last for 4 years.

[edit] Launch vehicle

The launch vehicle is a Delta II Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle class rocket. RBSP will launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

[edit] Spacecraft

RBSP consists of two spin stabilized spacecraft. Both spacecraft will launch from a single rocket.

[edit] Instruments

NASA Funded Investigations:

  1. Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) Instrument Suite [1]; The Principal Investigator is Harlan Spence [2] from Boston University. Key partners in this investigation LANL, Southwest Research Institute, Aerospace Corporation, LASP
  2. Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS); The Principal Investigator is Craig Kletzing from the University of Iowa.
  3. Electric Field and Waves Instrument (EFW); The Principal Investigator is John Wygant from University of Minnesota. Key partners in this investigation include the University of California at Berkeley.
  4. Radiation Belt Storm Probes Ion Composition Experiment (RBSPICE); The Principal Investigator is Lou Lanzerotti [3] from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Key partners include the Applied Physics Laboratory and Fundamental Technologies, LLC [4].

Government Furnished Equipment:

  1. Relativistic Particle Spectrometer (RPS) from the National Reconnaissance Office

[edit] External links

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  • RBSP Education and Public Outreach Website [5]

[edit] Milestones

1) Mission Concept Review (MCR) successfully completed, January 30-31, 2007