NASA Launches Twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes 30
eldavojohn writes "A press release announced the launch of NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission at 4:05 a.m. EDT Thursday morning. The probes are listed as healthy and ready to begin their 60-day commissioning period before beginning their prime mission to study Earth's electric atmosphere. Space.com has images of the launch. The spacecraft will study the Van Allen Radiation Belts and allow us better insight on the Sun's influence on the Earth as well as giving us a more accurate picture of Earth's magnetosphere. The spacecraft's sensitive parts are protected by 0.33 inches (8.5 millimeters) of aluminum and they will follow each other across a highly elliptical orbit almost exactly on the Earth's equatorial plane coming as close as 375 miles (603 km) and reaching as far as 20,000 miles (32187 km) from the surface of Earth to dynamically explore the radiation belts."
Re:Robotic manufacturing advances? (Score:5, Informative)
There's an article in this month's IEEE Spectrum about the Air Force pursuing the idea of "plug-and-play" satellites;
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/satellites/us-air-forces-plugandplay-satellites [ieee.org]
Note that RBSP is engineered to function to a region which most spacecraft avoid or pass through only briefly. There's a lot that's different in the design of these craft relative to a typical LEO satellite.
BTW, launch video is available here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mlaQothGWA [youtube.com]
Re:Awesome Launch (Score:5, Informative)
I was part of the NASA Social program where they're allowing the social networking community to blog and tweet along with "actual journalists".
What this did is allow a small group of social networking types to go into the LCC (Launch Control Center), to the launch pad, tour the VAB (and then watch the launch from the roof, and it's a great view from the largest single story building in the world), have a Q&A with the International Space Station via live downlink, and other fun things. They also catered lunch. It was a three day event although with the two scrubbed launches previously it extended quite a few days.
I mention "actual journalists" above in sarcastic quotes, because to be honest, they were completely different from the SocialMedia citizen type journalists. It was interesting to note that our group was not getting paid; in fact had to finance our own trip, hotels, airfare, etc. We hung out together before and after the daily grind, had breakfasts together after scrubbed launches at 0430 at IHOP and nerded out all over the place. Everyone was giddy and having fun and taking pictures of every nut and bolt, sign, elevator, mosquitos, grabbing all the scientific material, paying attention to all the NASA administrators, program managers, scientists, etc. Everyone was there because they loved NASA and science and were nerds about it.
The journalist types, were in many cases serious SOBs. They were either complaining about their per diem, trying to scam their employers out of new and expensive equipment, bitching about scrubbed launches, complaining to our media minders about having to follow rules, etc. The Fourth Estate was, frankly, embarrassing to be around. They were like petulant children. I'd love to list all the observations of these people but it was clear to me that this was a paycheck to them, or maybe they were too cool for school to say they liked this stuff. It was a sad observation of the "media" (though certainly not my first viewing of this behavior). I suspect it has to do with organizations fearing the media will write bad things about them or something, so they have to put up with these jackasses. In a strange situation the only media people that seemed positive were the FOX news guys, but I more suspect that it was because they were a local affiliate. The worst media was ironically the team from a particular science periodical. It was sad.