RBSP
Full Name: Radiation Belt Storm Probes
Phase: Development
Launch Date: 2012
Mission Project Home Page: http://rbsp.jhuapl.edu
Program(s): Living With a Star
RBSP is being designed to help us understand the Sun’s influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the Earth’s radiation belts, ionosphere and thermosphere on various scales of space and time.
The instruments on NASA’s Living With a Star Program’s (LWS) Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will provide the measurements needed to characterize and quantify the plasma processes that produce very energetic ions and relativistic electrons. The RBSP mission is part of the broader LWS Geospace program whose missions were conceived to explore fundamental processes that operate throughout the solar system and in particular those that generate hazardous space weather effects in the vicinity of Earth and phenomena that could impact solar system exploration. RBSP instruments will measure the properties of charged particles that comprise the Earth’s radiation belts, the plasma waves which interact with them, the large-scale electric fields which transport them, and the particle-guiding magnetic field.
There were two RBSP spacecraft in nearly identical eccentric orbits. The orbits covered the entire radiation belt region and the two spacecraft lapped each other several times over the course of the mission. The RBSP in situ measurements discriminated between spatial and temporal effects, and compared the effects of various proposed mechanisms for charged particle acceleration to very high energies and loss. NASA’s LWS program also selected three teams to study concepts for Missions of Opportunity that could augment the RBSP program. Ionosphere-Thermosphere Storm Probes are envisioned to join the geospace fleet to provide further crucial geospace measurements.