New NASA Mission Ready to Brave Earth's Radiation Belts

J.D. Harrington

Headquarters, Washington

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

 

Geoffrey Brown

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel Md.

240-228-5618 or 443-778-5618

geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission will send two spacecraft into the harsh environment of our planet's radiation belts. Final preparations have begun for launch on Thursday, Aug. 23, from Florida's Space Coast.

The RBSP spacecraft are designed to fly and operate in the heart of the most hazardous regions of near-Earth space to collect crucial data. The data will help researchers develop an understanding of the Van Allen radiation belts, two rings of very high energy electrons and protons that can pose hazards to human and robotic explorers.

"At the end of this month we will turn our attention from planet Mars to planet Earth, both immersed in the atmosphere of our sun," said Barbara Giles, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "RBSP will further explore the connection of solar variability and its impacts on Earth's radiation belts."

RBSP will help scientists understand how the invisible radiation belts -- named for James Van Allen, who discovered them -- behave and react to changes in the sun, thereby contributing to Earth's space weather. Space weather is caused in great part by the sun's influence on Earth and near-Earth space, including solar events such as giant eruptions of solar material called coronal mass ejections.

"The dramatic dynamics of Earth's radiation belts caused by space weather are highly unpredictable," said Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. "One of the fundamental objectives of the RBSP mission is to use Earth's magnetosphere as a natural laboratory to understand generally how radiation is created and evolves throughout the universe. There are many mysteries that need to be resolved."

Space weather fluctuations can increase radiation exposure for pilots and passengers during polar aircraft flights. They also can disable satellites, cause power grid failures, and disrupt the Global Positioning System, television and telecommunications signals. Understanding the science of space weather will lead to better space weather predictions, which in turn will allow us to better manage and protect our technological infrastructure in space and on the ground.

The spacecraft are atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket currently being prepared to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.

"Everything is ready and prepared for RBSP to launch as scheduled," said Richard Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager at APL. "Both the twin spacecraft and the entire RBSP team are eager to begin their exploration of one of the most dangerous parts of space near our planet."

The mission will last two years. The spacecraft, carrying the best and most comprehensive instrumentation ever sent into the radiation belts, will fly through surging and swelling belts of energized particles that would damage ordinary spacecraft. By using a pair of probes flying in highly elliptical orbits, scientists will be able to study the radiation belts over space and time, learn how particles within the belts are produced and behave during space weather events, and what mechanisms drive the acceleration of the particles.

RBSP is part of NASA's Living With a Star Program to explore aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. APL built the RBSP spacecraft and will manage the mission for NASA.

For more information about NASA's RBSP mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp.

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NASA to Hold News Conference on Upcoming Radiation Belt Storm Probes Launch

J.D. Harrington

Headquarters, Washington     

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

 

Geoffrey Brown

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

240-228-5618

geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Aug. 9 to discuss the upcoming launch of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), a mission to study Earth’s radiation belts. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website.

The two-year RBSP mission will help scientists develop an understanding of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts and related regions that pose hazards to human and robotic explorers.

RBSP is scheduled to launch no earlier than 4:08 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 23 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The twin probes will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

News conference panelists are:

-- Madhulika Guhathakurta, Living With a Star program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Mona Kessel, RBSP program scientist, NASA Headquarters

-- Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md.

-- Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager, APL, Laurel, Md.

Reporters can ask questions from NASA's centers, by telephone or via Twitter using the hashtag #asknasa. For dial-in information, reporters must send their name, media affiliation and telephone number to j.d.harrington@nasa.gov by 1 p.m. Aug. 9.

RBSP will explore space weather -- changes in Earth's space environment caused by the sun -- that can disable satellites, create power grid failures and disrupt GPS service. The mission also will allow researchers to understand fundamental radiation and particle acceleration processes throughout the universe.

Graphics presented during the news conference will be online shortly before the start of the event at http://www.nasa.gov/sunearth.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

For more information about the RBSP mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp.

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NASA to Hold News Conference on Upcoming Radiation Belt Storm Probes Launch

J.D. Harrington

Headquarters, Washington     

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

 

Geoffrey Brown

Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

240-228-5618

geoffrey.brown@jhuapl.edu

WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, Aug. 9 to discuss the upcoming launch of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP), a mission to study Earth’s radiation belts. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website.

The two-year RBSP mission will help scientists develop an understanding of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts and related regions that pose hazards to human and robotic explorers.

RBSP is scheduled to launch no earlier than 4:08 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 23 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The twin probes will lift off on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

News conference panelists are:

-- Madhulika Guhathakurta, Living With a Star program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Mona Kessel, RBSP program scientist, NASA Headquarters

-- Barry Mauk, RBSP project scientist, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), Laurel, Md.

-- Rick Fitzgerald, RBSP project manager, APL, Laurel, Md.

Reporters can ask questions from NASA's centers, by telephone or via Twitter using the hashtag #asknasa. For dial-in information, reporters must send their name, media affiliation and telephone number to j.d.harrington@nasa.gov by 1 p.m. Aug. 9.

RBSP will explore space weather -- changes in Earth's space environment caused by the sun -- that can disable satellites, create power grid failures and disrupt GPS service. The mission also will allow researchers to understand fundamental radiation and particle acceleration processes throughout the universe.

Graphics presented during the news conference will be online shortly before the start of the event at http://www.nasa.gov/sunearth.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

For more information about the RBSP mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp.

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NASA Announces Event for Social Media Followers at RBSP Launch

John Yembrick/Jason Townsend

Headquarters, Washington                          

202-358-0359

john.yembrick@nasa.gov / jason.c.townsend@nasa.gov

WASHINGTON -- NASA invites its social media followers to a two-day NASA Social on Aug. 22-23, at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the launch of NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) mission.

NASA Socials are in-person meetings with people who engage with the agency through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. This event is expected to culminate in the launch of the twin RBSP spacecraft, currently targeted for 4:08 a.m. EDT, Thursday, Aug. 23 aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Registration for the NASA Social opens at noon Thursday, July 5, and closes at noon Monday, July 9. Fifty participants will be selected from online registrations. Because portions of this event may take place in restricted areas, registration is limited to U.S. citizens.

Participants will have unique behind the scenes experiences with NASA, which they are encouraged to share with others through their favorite social networks. Guests will view the launch, tour facilities at Kennedy, speak with representatives from NASA and the Applied Physics Laboratory, view the RBSP launch pad, meet fellow space enthusiasts who are active on social media and meet members of NASA's launch services and social media teams.

The RBSP mission uses two identical spacecraft built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. Designed for a two-year primary science mission in orbit around Earth, RBSP will provide insight into our planet's radiation belts and help scientists predict changes in this critical region of space.

For more information on the NASA Social and to register, visit http://www.nasa.gov/social.

To find all the ways to connect and collaborate with NASA, visit http://www.nasa.gov/connect.

To learn more about RBSP, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp.

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Epidemic Intelligence: Using the Internet & Text Messages to Fight Disease

In the field of ‘epidemic intelligence,’ public health experts often turn to formal and informal data sources to learn about disease events occurring around the world. Advances in technology have been largely responsible for spurring the ability to augment the type and nature of potential data sources.

For example, unstructured data gleaned from the Internet in near real-time can be of significant value in identifying cues or signals that may indicate a disease outbreak is occurring in somewhere  in the world. This information can then be used to help guide response activities among public health officials when appropriate. The massive amount of data contained on the Internet, along with easy to use search tools and computerized language translation software, help make this work possible.

Websites hosted all over the world allow data to be uploaded from virtually anywhere – for instance, in the middle of the Congo with a cellular or satellite phone – making the Internet a very useful tool for discovering novel outbreaks. Where CNN and the BBC are less likely to provide news coverage, the multitude of non–English websites can provide access to information in remote towns in faraway places.

Surveillance of media and other Internet-based sites has become such a rapid method to learn about incipient outbreaks among humans, animals, and even plants, that agencies such as the World Health Organization , the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control  have specialized programs to do this work.

Even the Department of Defense has embraced these new tools to help partner nations fight disease. One such tool developed by the DoD is called the Suite for Automated Global Electronic bioSurveillance (SAGES). Launched in 2008, SAGES is a collection of freely-available software tools to use for disease surveillance in countries with limited resources. SAGES was developed jointly by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center (AFHSC)  and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. It is based on an existing, well-known surveillance tool called ESSENCE, or Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based Events. The SAGES suite contains a variety of data collection tools to capture disease data, including web forms, e-mail, digital logbooks, text messages (SMS) and interactive voice response technology.

Of particular interest are text messages that can be sent from points of care – such as clinics, hospitals or the field – directly to local and national offices of a country’s ministry of health. That data could provide information on an individual patient or a group of patients in a clinic, which health officials can then use to identify unusual spikes in disease activity and further investigate. One of the benefits of SAGES is that it operates with little overhead, few technical requirements, and without the need for prior knowledge of circulating diseases. These minimal technical requirements allow for the system to be used in urban centers as well as hard-to-reach rural settings. Data collection via SAGES is currently in use among AFHSC partners in Peru, Cambodia, and the Philippines; and 12 other countries are currently in various stages of SAGES implementation.

By design, such epidemic intelligence tools are far more sensitive than specific to make sure as many events as possible – whether they are naturally occurring or intentionally caused – are captured by the system. Despite their lack of specificity, internet and cellular technologies have made easy and fast access to disease indications and warnings about outbreaks, allowing experts to stop outbreaks sooner than ever possible due to rapid identification, investigation and verification.

For more information on SAGES, please email the authors at rohit.a.chitale@us.army.mil and jennifer.cockrill@us.army.mil

Barriers to the Science of Security

WATCH Series
March 15, 2012 12:00 PM  to
March 15, 2012 1:00 PM
NSF Room 110

In the past few years, there has been significant interest in promoting the idea of applying scientific principles to information security. The main point made by information security professionals who brief at workshops and conferences seems to be that our field of information security is finally mature enough to begin making significant strides towards applying the scientific approach. Reports such as the Jason's report on the Science of Security point to examples and approaches we should take to achieve success in applying science to security. Audiences everywhere enthusiastically agree and thrash themselves for bypassing science all along, bemoaning the fact that we could be "so much further along" if we only did science. Of course, after the presentation is over, everyone goes back to the methods that have been used throughout our generation to create prototypes and tools with no regard for the scientific principles involved. Why? In this presentation, I explore the barriers to adopting a scientific approach to experimental information security projects, including:

•time to publish as a primary driver

•standard of peer reviews in conferences and journals
•expectation of a breakthrough in every publication

Based on overcoming these issues, I will explore a more practical way by focusing on changes in attitudes and processes necessary for science of security to become more the rule than the exception.

Speaker

Dr. Tom Longstaff is currently on a two-year assignment as the Technical Director of the Systems Behavior group within the DoD National Security Agency. Prior to coming to NSA in 2012, Tom was the Chief Scientist for the Cyber Missions Branch of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Tom is also the chair of the Computer Science, Information Assurance, and Information Systems Engineering Programs within the Whiting School at The Johns Hopkins University.

Meeting Type

Lecture

Contacts

Keith Marzullo, (703) 292-8950 kmarzull@nsf.gov

NSF Related Organizations

Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering