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Inside the Van Allen Probes' Measuring Instruments

On November 9th, NASA renamed twin satellites - originally known as the Radiation Storm Belt Probes - to the Van Allen Probes in honor of James Van Allen, the scientist who helped launch the field of magnetospheric science. The Van Allen Probes have turned on and tested all instruments and are beginning their prime science mission: observing the giant belts of radiation around Earth in order to understand what causes them to swell and shrink in response to incoming radiation from the sun. The charged particles in these regions can be hazardous to both spacecraft and astronauts. In this video, Dr. David Sibeck explains the instruments on the twin satellites.

Topics:
Aerospace Data Acquisition Data Acquisition Energy Measuring Instruments RF & Microwave Electronics Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 Music Music David Sibeck: The goals of the mission are to determine where the charged particles in the Earths radiation belts come from? How they get energized? And how they're lost into space? Each of the two spacecraft carries five instrument suites, and a total of eight instruments. The two spacecraft are identical. One of the instrument suites on the spacecraft is the ECT suite. And this instrument suite consists of a set of instruments. The HOPE instrument measures the coldest plasma in the Earth's radiation environment. MagEIS, measures

    00:00:41 intermediate energy; ions and electrons. Next instrument up is REPT and it measures still higher particles. The RBSPICE instrument measures ring current particles and their composition. The wind current is a region of charged particles around the Earth that greatly affects the Earth's magnetic field. The RPS instrument measures the radioactive particles in the inner radiation belt. The EFW instrument measures the electric field. And it spectacularly consists of very long wires that extend 40 to 50 meters out from the spacecraft with little balls on the end that measure the sensitive electric field in space.

    00:01:22 The EMFISIS instrument suite comprises two instruments. A magnetometer out on a boom, that measures the ambient magnetic field out in space and a search coil magnetometer that measures wave activity in the magnetic field. I'm excited about this mission because it's going to provide answers to questions that we've been asking a long time; about where the particles come from in the Earths radiation belts? What charges them up? And what causes them to move around? I've been wondering about this a long time, and I'm ready to learn the answer. beep beep