LAUREL, Md., May 25 (UPI) -- NASA has selected Johns Hopkins University in Maryland to develop spacecraft to study the sun's interaction with Earth's radiation belts.
The university's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., also will operate the NASA spacecraft in a mission to determine how varying inputs of solar energy form or change populations of relativistic electrons and ions in the Earth's radiation belts.
Those doughnut-shaped bands of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field extend some 20,000 miles around the planet.
After launch, scheduled for 2012, the spacecraft will measure the distributions of charged particles, as well as the electric and magnetic fields that energize, transport or remove the particles within the belts.
The results, said NASA, will provide information needed to predict potentially hazardous space weather, much in the same way weather is forecast on Earth.
Also, the spacecrafts' observations will be used to improve the characterization of planetary space environments, NASA said -- which will permit better design and operation of technology on Earth and in space.
"For the first time, several spacecraft will simultaneously watch activity on the sun and the reaction to that activity within Earth's radiation belts," said Ken Potocki, APL programs manager.
