The Electron Beltway

B-roll for Van Allen Probe Live Shot. Answers the following suggested questions: You may think space is empty, but there is a lot there that we can’t see. What are space weather and radiation belts?How do you observe the radiation belts?A new radiation belt was discovered several years ago. Tell us about that discovery.Can you tell us about the final mission that the Van Allen probes are going on?How do radiation belts affect space travel, astronauts and the space station?Where can we learn more? Canned interview with NASA scientist Dr. Nicky Fox looking off camera. Soundbites are separated by slates. Canned interview with NASA scientist Dr. David Sibeck. Soundbites are separated by slates. Canned interview with Dr. Nelli Mosavi, project manager for the Van Allen Probes at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. Soundbites are separated by slates. Van Allen Probes animation NASA’s probe to understand a mysterious region around Earth is coming to an end. After a six and a half year long journey, the Van Allen Probes are going on one last mission. THIS WEEK NASA will move its twin Van Allen Probe satellites into a lower orbit as they begins their swan song — their last year to explore the hazardous radiation belts that surround Earth. In addition to providing non-stop observations of this little-explored region, it will act as a real-time experiment of how elements in the atmosphere can cause instruments to degrade in space.The Van Allen Probes launched in 2012 to explore the twin radiation belts around Earth; their mission had been expected to end in 2018. Unexpectedly resistant to the high-energy radiation coursing through the region, the spacecraft were hardy enough that — with some savvy fuel conservation — the mission could be extended another year. By studying the doughnut-shaped rings of radiation and how well spacecraft can survive there, NASA can better understand how radiation affects astronauts and technology sent into space. Join NASA scientists from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, February 12, to learn about the Van Allen Probes’ final operation.** To schedule an interview, fill out THIS FORM** satellite coordinates HD Satellite Coordinates for G17-K24/Lower: Galaxy 17 Ku-band Xp 24 Slot Lower| 91.0 ° W Longitude | DL 12171.0 MHz | Vertical Polarity | QPSK/DVB-S | FEC 3/4 | SR 13.235 Mbps | DR 18.2954 MHz | HD 720p | Format MPEG2 | Chroma Level 4:2:0 | Audio EmbeddedInterview Location: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.Questions? Contact michelle.z.handleman@nasa.gov or 301-286-0918. For More InformationSee [https://www.nasa.gov/van-allen-probes](https://www.nasa.gov/van-allen-probes) Related pages

Space is a better vacuum than any we can create on Earth, but it's nonetheless bustling with activity. It overflows with energy, particles and a complex system of magnetic field lines. This animation shows the busy-ness of near-Earth space, where the magnetic environment around Earth can trap electrons and charged particles. Related pages

Visualization of the radiation belts with confined charged particles (blue & yellow) and plasmapause boundary (blue-green surface) Earth surrounded by plasmapause (blue-green surface) and radiation belts (multi-color). View as above but now radiation belts sliced open to reveal plasmapause surface, particle trajectories trapped by magnetic field. View as above, but now plasmapause sliced open to reveal inner radiation belt. View as above, more particle motion. View as above, even more particle motion. The near-Earth space enviroment is a complex interaction between Earth's magnetic field, cool plasma moving up from Earth's ionosphere, and hotter plasma coming in from the solar wind. This interactions combine to maintain the radiation belts around Earth.Plasma interactions can generate sharply delineated regions in these belts. In addition to the inner and outer radiation belts, the cooler plasma of the plasmasphere interacts so that it keeps out the higher-energy electrons from outside its boundary (called the plasmapause).In this visualization, the radiation belts (rainbow-color) and plasmapause (blue-green surface) surround Earth, its structure largely determined by Earth's dipole magnetic field (represented by cyan curved lines). The radiation belt is sliced open, simultaneously revealing representative confined charged particles spiraling around the magnetic field structure. Yellow particles represent negative-charged electrons, blue particles represent positive-charged ions. However, if realistically scaled for particle mass and energies, the spiral motion would not be visible at this distance so particle masses and size scales are adjusted to make them visible.The inner blue-green plasmapause boundary is then sliced open to reveal more of the inner structure of the radiation belts, including the innermost belt. For More InformationSee [NASA.gov](http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/van-allen-probes-spot-impenetrable-barrier-in-space/) Related pages

NASA spacecraft discover a third radiation belt surrounding Earth. The inner, outer and third rings are colored orange and green in this cutaway view of the Van Allen Belts. Watch this video to learn more about the discovery made by the Van Allen Probes. The two Van Allen Probes are designed to lap each other many times during the mission, to observe occurrences throughout the belts. When the Van Allen Probes launched, scientists thought the belts always looked like this, with two belts—shown here in red. The third radiation belt probably formed due to this prominence eruption on the sun, imaged by NASA's SDO on Aug. 31, 2012. For More InformationSee [NASA.gov](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/third-belt.html) Related pages