{"id":14034,"date":"2018-01-25T22:14:22","date_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-science-instrument-ready-to-study-critical-space-weather-boundary-zone\/"},"modified":"2018-01-25T22:14:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:14:22","slug":"nasa-science-instrument-ready-to-study-critical-space-weather-boundary-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-science-instrument-ready-to-study-critical-space-weather-boundary-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA science instrument ready to study critical space weather boundary zone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The Airbus-built SES 14 communications satellite and the GOLD payload are readied for attachment to its Ariane 5 rocket. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 JM Guillon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A $66 million NASA-funded science sensor package bolted on to a commercial communications satellite is ready for a ride toward a 22,000-mile-high orbital perch Thursday on a European Ariane 5 rocket, commencing a two-year mission surveying a rarely-studied region of Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, or GOLD, instrument is mounted on the SES 14 satellite, a commercial telecom craft awaiting liftoff Thursday from the European-run Guiana Space Center on the northern coast of South America.<\/p>\n

Developed by scientists at the University of Central Florida and the University of Colorado-Boulder, GOLD will map the composition and temperature of the upper atmosphere across the Western Hemisphere once every 30 minutes. Researchers said the instrument will yield a better understanding of how layers of the upper atmosphere \u2014 the thermosphere and ionosphere \u2014 react when bombarded with radiation from the sun above or influenced by weather systems below.<\/p>\n

Data from GOLD could help improve space weather forecasts, providing better warnings of events that could spark auroral storms, communications and navigation outages, disruptions to aviation, and danger for astronauts and satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we wanted to do is to get the big picture,\u201d said Richard Eastes, a scientist at the University of Central Florida who conceived of the GOLD instrument. \u201cFor years, we\u2019ve been studying the Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere \u2014 the thermosphere and ionosphere we call it sometimes \u2014 and we\u2019ve been looking at those in detail from the ground and from low Earth orbit missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

GOLD will ride with the SES 14 communications satellite to geostationary orbit, a location nearly 22,300 miles (nearly 36,800 kilometers) over the equator. At that altitude, the spacecraft will move around Earth at the same rate of the planet\u2019s rotation, giving GOLD a fixed field-of-view from high altitude.<\/p>\n

Large broadcasting satellites are often launched into geostationary orbit because it allows ground-based antennas to connect with the spacecraft by pointing at the same place in the sky at all times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to be able to back off and look at it from geostationary orbit and get the big picture, get a whole hemisphere at once,\u201d Eastes said. \u201cThat lets us put things into context, things that we can\u2019t understand when we\u2019re just looking at one little piece. But also, at the same time, we wanted to get pictures of the temperatures (in the thermosphere and ionosphere), which is something we haven\u2019t had before.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The GOLD instrument. Credit: LASP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eastes and other scientists want to know how violent geomagnetic storms triggered by outbursts from the sun alter the composition and temperature of the upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The ionosphere is an expansive region of the outer atmosphere, stretching between 30 miles and 600 miles (48 to 965 kilometers) above Earth\u2019s surface. The Earth\u2019s mesosphere, the region where meteors burn up, overlaps the lower part of the ionosphere, and the thermosphere contains the ionosphere\u2019s outer portion.<\/p>\n

Many orbiting satellites, including the International Space Station fly through the ionosphere, which contains electrons and ionized atoms, and responds to changing solar activity levels by shrinking or expanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have radio signals from our communications sateliltes and from our GPS satellites passing down to the ground to our cell phones and GPS navigation systems that have to go through the ionosphere,\u201d said Sarah Jones, mission scientist for GOLD at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. \u201cThe ionosphere is a very dynamic place with a lot of structuring, and as the structure develops, it can actually garble all of these signals that are coming through our atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s more variable than we had realized in the past, and its actually an exciting opportunity for GOLD to now take a look and help us to understand how the ionosphere affects our day-to-day life,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

She said the GOLD mission is studying \u201cwhat\u2019s essentially a new area of scientific research\u201d by examining how the ionosphere responds not just to solar activity, but also weather patterns below it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, people thought that this region of the Earth\u2019s upper atmosphere was affected primarily by what\u2019s happening at the sun,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sun\u2019s magnetic field also interacts with the Earth and causes things like geomagnetic storms and other effects that we refer to as space weather,\u201d she said. \u201cHowever, in the last 10 years or so, there\u2019s been this growing body of evidence that the upper atmosphere is also affected by what\u2019s going on below, like the terrestrial weather, which is the weather that we experience every day here on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

GOLD will also detect the nighttime airglow coming from the upper atmosphere at night.<\/p>\n

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The last time Earth\u2019s disk was seen in far-ultraviolet light was in 1972, during the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission. Astronaut John W. Young used a UV camera to take this photo of Earth from the moon. GOLD will have a continuous view of Earth\u2019s atmosphere in far-ultraviolet light, allowing scientists to see changes to the ionosphere and thermosphere that are otherwise invisible.
Credits: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Space weather\u2019s effects on the ionosphere are \u201cinteracting with spacecraft, sometimes disrupting them, and it even creates a really nasty environment for astronauts,\u201d said Alex Young, associate director for heliophysics science at Goddard. \u201cSo understanding that is important also for space travel near the Earth and throughout the rest of the solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Built by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, the GOLD instrument contains a high-resolution, far-ultraviolet imaging spectrograph. From its position in geostationary orbit, GOLD will get a complete view of an entire hemisphere of Earth.<\/p>\n

Past missions that studied the ionosphere had satellites that flew through the region and sampled conditions directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe great thing about this orbit is the orbit stays above one location on the Earth, and that allow us to keep reviewing the same location on Earth over and over,\u201d Eastes said. \u201cThat lets us follow the evolution in time, throughout the day, of the upper atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA has another mission \u2014 the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON \u2014 set for launch in the coming months to collect more measurements from the upper atmosphere. Jones said GOLD and ICON will make tandem observations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ICON mission is launching later this year, and it consists of a suite of instruments that will be flying in low Earth orbit studying a science that is very similar to what GOLD is studying, but, of course, from a very different vantage point,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

\u201cICON will be flying through that very region, directly meausuring the particles there and how they move,\u201d she said. \u201cThat means that ICON will be getting a very localized view with fine scales, in contrast to GOLD, which is hovering 22,000 miles above seeing the whole global scale, and watching everything play out below.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA selected the GOLD instrument from several proposals in 2013, after a multi-year concept study by Eastes\u2019 team.<\/p>\n

Eastes wanted to place the sensor in geostationary orbit, a location populated with numerous commercial and military communications satellites. He knew finding a satellite with an owner willing to host the GOLD instrument would significantly reduce the mission\u2019s cost, giving it a better chance of jumping from the drawing board to reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe initial conversations (I had) was that I was looking for a ride,\u201d Eastes recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI called up a a few satellite companies looking to see who has satellite and who\u2019s flying them, and I realized communications companies are flying lots of satellites,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was the place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA paid SES, a company based in Luxembourg with one of the largest geostationary fleets, to host the GOLD instrument on its SES 14 spacecraft once the operator agreed to the plan.<\/p>\n

The hosted payload arrangement is not unique. Space industry officials, military leaders and scientists have advocated for more hosted payloads for years, but the projects have often run into negotiating roadblocks when managers attempt to merge the needs of a host satellite with the requirements of a secondary instrument box.<\/p>\n

Todd Gossett, senior director of hosted payloads at SES Government Solutions, said instruments like GOLD take advantage of their host satellite\u2019s power and telemetry capabilities, along with a ground station network. And NASA did not have to pay for all the launch costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does all this mean? A hosted payload customer can oftentimes use a hosted payload to save tons of money, up to hundreds of millions of dollars, versus procuring a dedicated satellite on their own,\u201d Gossett said.<\/p>\n

The GOLD instrument was delivered to Airbus Defense and Space, SES 14\u2019s manufacturer, last year at the company\u2019s production site in Toulouse, France, where engineers installed the sensor and ensured its compatibility with the satellite.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s budget for GOLD amounted to $66.3 million, around $6.7 under the planned cost, according to Dwayne Brown, an agency spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Controllers at the University of Colorado will oversee GOLD\u2019s activities in space, while a science center at the University of Central Florida will catalog and analyze the results.<\/p>\n

GOLD is scheduled for blastoff Thursday at 2220 GMT (5:20 p.m. EST) aboard a European Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. It will be the first of up to 14 Arianespace missions planned for 2018.<\/p>\n

The SES 14 satellite\u2019s primary purpose is to provide aeronautical and maritime mobility connectivity, wireless communications, broadband delivery, and video and data services over North, Central and South America, the Caribbean, the North Atlantic and parts of Europe, replacing the NSS-806 satellite.<\/p>\n

Another communications satellite, named Al Yah 3, is also awaiting liftoff on the Ariane 5 and will support broadband Internet and data services over Africa and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Airbus-built SES 14 communications satellite and the GOLD payload are readied for attachment to its Ariane 5 rocket. Credit: ESA\/CNES\/Arianespace \u2013 Photo Optique Video du CSG \u2013 JM Guillon A $66 million NASA-funded science sensor package bolted on to a commercial communications satellite is ready for a ride toward a 22,000-mile-high orbital perch Thursday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1657,3050,1540,2448,498,291,2164,1696],"class_list":["post-14034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-airbus-defense-and-space","tag-al-yah-3","tag-ariane-5","tag-ariane-group","tag-arianespace","tag-commercial-space","tag-eurostar-e3000","tag-geostar-3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14034\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}