John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab to Build NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP)

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Office of Communications and Public Affairs
Laurel, Maryland
Media Contact: Michael Buckley
(240) 228-7536 or (443) 778-7536

May 24, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JOHNS HOPKINS APPLIED PHYSICS LAB TO BUILD NASA's RADIATION BELT STORM
PROBES

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in
Laurel,
Md., will develop and operate twin NASA spacecraft to study how the sun

interacts with Earth's radiation belts.

Part of NASA's Living With a Star Program, the Radiation Belt Storm
Probes
(RBSP) mission will determine how varying inputs of solar energy form
or
change populations of relativistic electrons and ions in the Earth's
radiation belts - the doughnut-shaped bands of charged particles
trapped by
Earth's magnetic field that extend some 20,000 miles around our planet.

After launch, scheduled for 2012, the RBSP spacecraft will measure the
distributions of charged particles as well as the electric and magnetic

fields that energize, transport or remove the particles within these
belts.

Detailed design of the probes will begin this summer, after NASA
selects
the spacecraft's science instruments. The mission's science results
will
provide the understanding needed to predict potentially hazardous space

weather effects, much in the same way we forecast weather on Earth.
Furthermore, observations from the spacecraft will be used to improve
the
characterization of planetary space environments. Increased knowledge
of
the space environment and effects of space weather will permit better
design and operations of new 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," says Ken Potocki, APL's Living With a Star programs manager.
"These
probes will have to work in an incredibly difficult radiation
environment
where charging and discharging will occur, a lot like flying into an
electrical storm. But our team looks forward to the engineering and
design
challenge. We know how important these data will be."

Radiation Belt Storm Probes is the first project assigned to APL under
a
12-year contract, awarded in December 2000, to design, develop and
operate
missions in the Living With a Star and Solar Terrestrial Probes
programs.
The Lab's experience in developing spacecraft to study the sun-Earth
relationship includes the TIMED satellite, currently examining solar
effects on Earth's upper atmosphere, and the twin STEREO probes, which
after launch this summer will begin taking the first 3-D images of
solar
events called coronal mass ejections, which can blast billions of tons
of
the sun's atmosphere into space and trigger severe magnetic storms when

they collide with Earth.

APL spacecraft have flown into the charged-particle environment befo
The
Charge Composition Explorer, one of three spacecraft in the
international
Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) program of the
1980s, measured the composition of magnetospheric particles as well as
the
variations of these particles over space and time.

All told, APL has built 62 spacecraft and more than 150 space
instruments.

The Living With a Star (LWS) Program Office at NASA Goddard Space
Flight
Center, Greenbelt, Md., has overall program responsibility for the
Radiation Belt Storm Probes mission as well as the first LWS mission -
the
Solar Dynamics Observatory - planned for launch in 2008. For more
information on the program, visit http://lws.gsfc.nasa.gov.

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The Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), a not-for-profit laboratory and
division of The Johns Hopkins University, conducts research and
development
primarily for national security and for nondefense projects of national
and
global significance. For more information, visit www.jhuapl.edu.