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."
Awesome Launch (Score:5, Interesting)
I had the good luck to watch the launch from the roof of the VAB, and the launch was great. Although the moisture ladden air made long exposure photography not come out as crisp, it did make for a much better light show as the spaceship blasted off.
Many people are bummed out from the lack of "manned" space travel with NASA, but on the floor of the VAB, across from the shuttle Endeavour, were the nose cone and Launch Escape System - LES, for the Orion program.
Good luck to the RBSP and hope the data it sends back will give us more knowledge going forward to have humans travel safely through the storm belts.
first US sat 55 years discovered space radiation (Score:4, Interesting)
We still dont fully understand how space weather works, nor how it interacts with the climate and human technology.
Metric Units Only Please (Score:3, Interesting)
Or at least quote the metric units first. If NASA is so se serious about going fully metric then they should go fully and only metric. Perhaps that would even help to educate the masses somewhat by forcing people to relate to it.
Interesting PR (Score:3, Interesting)
The word "satellite" is eliminated except as something the mission can help out with. I'm used to "probe" meaning a platform shot beyond our orbit.
Are they just trying to ride the cool-factor of the recent Mars probe programs, or do these orbiters actually do something sufficiently different from satellites to earn the name-shift?
I'm fine with calling them "probes" since they're dipped in what's being studied. And I guess I'm okay with terms being fluffed for short-attention public and congress. But it first made me dig to find out how these were doing VAB study without being satellites, and then left me wondering if they're still not quite satellites in a way that's not explained. Is this terminology only PR? (If so, has it started with these?)
Re:Robotic manufacturing advances? (Score:5, Interesting)
Excepting very few use cases, most spacecraft are bespoke because each mission is different. There are very few times when a spacecraft is constructed en masse - basically the same spacecraft churned out in multiple copies, and even then the number tends to be extremely limited (usually below 10), so setting up assembly lines doesn't generally justify the overhead.
Now, there are efforts to componentize spacecraft so building one is basically like snapping together Lego. Including having flight software automatically reconfigure itself to handle those blocks like modern OSes do when you plug in USB devices.
The main problem is that it's extremely expensive to launch spacecraft - easily $1B per launch. Neverminding the large fraction that don't make it at all. As such, equipment sent up there has to put up with some of the worst scenarios in the world - little projectiles whizzing along and handling all the damage it causes, limited weight (too heavy and it costs way more $$$), the fact that there's no way to practically repair it (very few get the Hubble treatment), and that it has to last many years (because you don't want to launch its replacement and spend another billion soon aferwards)
When you've got billion(s) on the line, spending a few years ensuring that failures are minimized and tolerated is just part of the game. Cube sats and such only have to last a few weeks - which is a much easier thing to do than making one last at least a decade or more.