{"id":16816,"date":"2014-11-20T22:07:51","date_gmt":"2014-11-20T14:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/pegasus-rocket-selected-to-launch-icon-satellite\/"},"modified":"2014-11-20T22:07:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-20T14:07:51","slug":"pegasus-rocket-selected-to-launch-icon-satellite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/pegasus-rocket-selected-to-launch-icon-satellite\/","title":{"rendered":"Pegasus rocket selected to launch ICON satellite"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"File
File photo of a Pegasus XL rocket launch from June 2013. Credit: NASA TV<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA has selected an Orbital Sciences Corp. air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to place a small research satellite in orbit in 2017 to study the connection between Earth\u2019s weather and space weather, the space agency announced Thursday.<\/p>\n

The Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, mission will orbit 360 miles above Earth to investigate the boundary region between space and the atmosphere, a region subject to variability in charged particles that can disrupt radio transmissions and GPS navigation signals.<\/p>\n

A Pegasus XL rocket dropped from the belly of an L-1011 carrier airplane will launch the ICON spacecraft in June 2017. The aircraft will take off from the U.S. Army\u2019s Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, then fly to a predetermined location over the Pacific Ocean to deploy the three-stage Pegasus rocket.<\/p>\n

NASA said the firm-fixed price launch services agreement is worth approximately $56.3 million. The figure includes spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking, data and telemetry and other launch support requirements.<\/p>\n

Orbital\u2019s winged Pegasus launcher has flown 42 times since 1990, including a string of 28 successful flights in a row. The rocket\u2019s last flight was in June 2013, and with ICON\u2019s assignment, there are two Pegasus launches on the manifest in 2016 and 2017.<\/p>\n

The refrigerator-sized satellite will weigh nearly 600 pounds fueled for launch. Orbital Sciences is also manufacturing the spacecraft, which is based on the company\u2019s LEOStar 2 satellite bus.<\/p>\n

The mission has a cost cap of $200 million, excluding launch costs.<\/p>\n

\"Artist's
Artist\u2019s concept of the ICON spacecraft. Credit: University of California at Berkeley\/Space Sciences Laboratory<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New discoveries show terrestrial weather systems \u2014 such as storms and disturbances in the lower atmosphere \u2014 can affect activity higher up. Scientists previously thought fluctuations in the ionosphere, a layer of charged particles between 60 and 600 miles in altitude, were primarily driven by the sun, according to NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cICON addresses a national need to predict these kinds of disturbed conditions in space,\u201d said Thomas Immel, principal investigator for ICON at the University of California at Berkeley. \u201cThese disturbances can cause radio communication to suddenly and unexpectedly drop out, which is a problem for ships, airplanes, the global positioning system, and the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ICON spacecraft hosts four science instruments to measure the movements and temperatures of neutral particles, the thickness of the ionosphere, the composition of the atmosphere, and electric fields around the satellite.<\/p>\n

ICON is managed by NASA\u2019s Explorers program under the agency\u2019s heliophysics division.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years people thought that energy coming in from above, through the solar wind or solar ultraviolet radiation, was the only cause of changes in the upper atmosphere,\u201d said Doug Rowland, mission scientist for ICON at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. \u201cBut we now realize that atmospheric movements down below, closer to Earth, actually have a strong effect on what\u2019s happening above.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diurnal and seasonal variations in the strength of the ionosphere indicate a linkage with what is happening in the lower atmosphere. Data collected by the two-year ICON mission could help forecasters better predict space weather in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince 2000, we have seen more, very clear evidence that our previous theories about a solar-driven ionosphere does not match reality,\u201d Immel said. \u201cInstead, the structure of the ionosphere changes with weather and with the seasons. There must be another driver of these disturbances besides the sun, and whatever it is, it\u2019s large and controlling.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

File photo of a Pegasus XL rocket launch from June 2013. Credit: NASA TV NASA has selected an Orbital Sciences Corp. air-launched Pegasus XL rocket to place a small research satellite in orbit in 2017 to study the connection between Earth\u2019s weather and space weather, the space agency announced Thursday. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or […]<\/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":[2493,2260,1828],"class_list":["post-16816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-icon","tag-orbital-sciences","tag-pegasus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16816"}],"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=16816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}