Heliophysics Sentinels 2018

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    ID: 13275 Produced Video

    How NASA Will Protect Astronauts From Space Radiation

    Aug. 7th, 2019
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    August 1972, as NASA scientist Ian Richardson remembers it, was hot. In Surrey, England, where he grew up, the fields were brown and dry, and people tried to stay out of the Sun, indoors and televisions on. But for several days that month, his TV picture kept breaking up. “Do not adjust your set,” he recalls the BBC announcing. “Heat isn’t causing the interference. It’s sunspots.”The same sunspots that disrupted the television signals led to enormous solar flares — powerful bursts of radiation from the Sun — Aug. 4-7 that year. Between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, the solar eruptions were a near miss for lunar explorers. Had they been in orbit or on the Moon’s surface, they would have sustained dangerous levels of solar radiation sparked by the eruptions. Today, the Apollo-era flares serve as a reminder of the threat of radiation exposure for technology and astronauts in space. Understanding and predicting solar eruptions is crucial for safe space exploration. Almost 50 years since those 1972 storms, the data, technology and resources available to NASA have improved, enabling advancements towards space weather forecasts and astronaut protection — key to NASA’s Artemis program to return astronauts to the Moon.Read more on NASA.gov. ||

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    ID: 13143 Produced Video

    NASA's Mission Through Dangerous Space Is Going Out in Style

    Feb. 11th, 2019
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    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? ||

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    ID: 4822 Visualization

    Heliophysics Sentinels 2020

    Sept. 15th, 2020
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    There have been few changes since the 2018 Heliophysics Fleet. Van Allen Probes and SORCE have been decommissioned, while Solar Orbiter, ICON and SET have been added. As of spring 2020, here's a tour of the NASA Heliophysics fleet from the near-Earth satellites out to the Voyagers beyond the heliopause.Excepting the Voyager missions, the satellite orbits are color coded for their observing program:Magenta: TIM (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere) observationsYellow: solar observations and imageryCyan: Geospace and magnetosphereViolet: Heliospheric observations ||

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• Older versions

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    ID: 4589 Visualization

    Heliophysics Sentinels 2017

    Oct. 25th, 2017
    (updated Aug. 25th, 2023)

    This visualization starts from near Earth and the Earth orbiting satellite fleet out to the Moon, then past the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1 to out beyond the heliopause. This is the long-play version. || There have been few changes since the 2015 Earth-Orbiting Heliophysics Fleet. As of summer 2017, here's a tour of the NASA Heliophysics fleet from the near-Earth satellites out to the Voyagers beyond the heliopause.The satellite orbits are color coded for their observing program:Magenta: TIM (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere) observationsYellow: solar observations and imageryCyan: Geospace and magnetosphereViolet: Heliospheric observationsNear-Earth Fleet:Hinode: Observes the Sun in multiple wavelengths up to x-rays. SVS pageRHESSI : Observes the Sun in x-rays and gamma-rays. SVS pageTIMED: Studies the upper layers (40-110 miles up) of Earth's atmosphere. SVS pageSORCE: Monitors solar intensity across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum.AIM: Images and measures noctilucent clouds. SVS pageVan Allen Probes: Two probes moving along the same orbit designed to study the impact of space weather on Earth's radiation belts. SVS pageTWINS: Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-Atom Spectrometers are two probes observing the Earth with neutral atom imagers.IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph is designed to take high-resolution spectra and images of the region between the solar photosphere and solar atmosphere. SVS pageGeosynchronous Fleet:SDO: Solar Dynamics Observatory keeps the Sun under continuous observation at 16 megapixel resolution. SVS pageGeospace Fleet:Geotail: Conducts measurements of electrons and ions in the Earth's magnetotail. SVS pageMagnetospheric Multi-scale (MMS): This is a group of four satellites which fly in formation to measure how particles and fields in the magnetosphere vary in space and time. SVS pageTHEMIS: This is a fleet of three satellites to study how magnetospheric instabilities produce substorms. Two of the original five satellites were moved into lunar orbit to become ARTEMIS. SVS page IBEX: The Interstellar Boundary Explorer measures the flux of neutral atoms from the heliopause. SVS pageLunar Orbiting Fleet:ARTEMIS: Two of the THEMIS satellites were moved into lunar orbit to study the interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere with the Moon. SVS pageSun-Earth Lagrange Point One Fleet:The L1 point is a Lagrange Point between the Sun and the Earth. Spacecraft can orbit this location for continuous coverage of the Sun.SOHO: Studies the Sun with cameras and a multitude of other instruments. SVS pageACE: Measures the composition and characteristics of the solar wind. SVS pageWind: Measures particle flows and fields in the solar wind. SVS pageSolar Orbiting Fleet:STEREO-A & STEREO-B: The two STEREO spaceraft orbit the Sun in roughly the same orbit as Earth. There have been some communications problems with STEREO-B since 2014. SVS pageInterstellar Fleet:Voyager 1 & Voyager 2: The two Voyager spaceraft orbit originally performed flybys of the outer planets of the solar system but continued to operate. They are now the most distant monitors of the plasma in the space between the stars. SVS pageMajor changes with earlier versions:L1 fleet, STEREOs and Voyagers addedCINDI de-orbited and removedCamera move extended to out beyond the heliopause ||

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