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The course of geomagnetic activity disturbances caused by 

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flares on the sun, by big blogs of plasma coming out from the 

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sun towards the Earth. The Earth's magnetic field is battered and shaken.

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Some of that energy is captured in the earth's magnetic field and through a 

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variety of processes that energy, energizes particles in the 

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Earth's radiation belts, up to energies that are hazardous to 

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spacecraft and astronauts. The Radiation Belt Storm Probes

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mission, is NASA's mission to study the Earth's Van Allen Radiation 

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Belts. Two invisible regions of highly charged 

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particles in space that surround the Earth. Each of the two

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RBSP spacecraft carries five instrument suites and a

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total of eight instruments, the two spacecraft are identical.

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The region of space that we're talking about where the Radiation Belt Storm

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Probe spacecraft will go, is one that's occupied by communication

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spacecraft, by weather spacecraft, by all sorts of spacecraft that you use

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on a daily basis.

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There are two Van Allen Radiation Belts. The one closer to Earth about, 

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1,000 miles up, above the Earth's equator contains highly

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charged protons that are trapped there for years and years.

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The further out radiation belt, the outer radiation belt,

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at about a twelfth of a distance to the moon, contains a mixture of energetic 

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electrons and energetic ions. Both of them are hazardous but hazardous in 

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different ways and at different times. They're always changing waxing

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waning, increasing and decreasing in strength, we don't understand

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why. The goals of the Radiation Belt Storm

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Probes mission are to determine where the charged particles in the Earth's 

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radiation belts come from, how they get energized, and how they're

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lost into space. The first use for the data

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from the mission will be by scientists who attempt to understand the physical processes

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that are occurring in the radiation belts. They'll use those data to develop

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models for space weather in the Earth's environment, the hazardous features that

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surround us. However the data can also be used by engineers 

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to better design spacecraft. For example if you know how much radiation

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is out there, you know how thick to shield your spacecraft with walls

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of metal. The Earth's radiation belts pose a hazard to 

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astronauts, a hazard because radiation, prolonged exposure to radiation

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can cause cancer. What we want to do is understand

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just how much radiation is out there, and just where it is and we can

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warn astronauts when to be inside and outside their spacecraft.

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The RBSP spacecraft are focused on the dynamic

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radiation belts in the Earth's inner magnetosphere, they're the only 

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spacecraft that focus on those. Consequently they're a critical component

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in the series of phenomenon that link the Sun to the Earth.

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music

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beep

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beep

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