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Van Allen Probes Stories

NASA’s Van Allen Probe A to Re-Enter Atmosphere 
3 min read

NASA’s Van Allen Probe A is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere almost 14 years after launch. From 2012 to 2019, the spacecraft and its twin, Van Allen Probe B, flew through the Van Allen belts, rings of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field, to understand how particles were…

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NASA CubeSat Finds New Radiation Belts After May 2024 Solar Storm
5 min read

Key Points The largest solar storm in two decades hit Earth in May 2024. For several days, wave after wave of high-energy charged particles from the Sun rocked the planet. Brilliant auroras engulfed the skies, and some GPS communications were…

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Ten Highlights From NASA’s Van Allen Probes Mission
6 min read

After seven years of operations, and upon finally running out of propellant, the second of the twin Van Allen Probes spacecraft will be retired on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019. Spacecraft A of the Van Allen Probes mission will be shut…

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First of Two Van Allen Probes Spacecraft Ceases Operations
2 min read

On July 19, 2019, at 1:27 p.m. EDT, mission operators sent a shutdown command to one of two Van Allen Probes spacecraft, known as spacecraft B, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, or APL, in Laurel, Maryland. As…

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NASA’s Van Allen Probes Begin Final Phase of Exploration in Earth’s Radiation Belts
4 min read

Two tough, resilient, NASA spacecraft have been orbiting Earth for the past six and a half years, flying repeatedly through a hazardous zone of charged particles around our planet called the Van Allen radiation belts. The twin Van Allen Probes,…

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The Case of the Relativistic Particles Solved with NASA Missions
3 min read

Encircling Earth are two enormous rings — called the Van Allen radiation belts — of highly energized ions and electrons. Various processes can accelerate these particles to relativistic speeds, which endanger spacecraft unlucky enough to enter these giant bands of…

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