Author Topic: Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission  (Read 3034 times)

Offline catdlr

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Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission
« on: 04/12/2013 11:38 pm »

April 12, 2013
 
 
 
NASA Selects Explorer Projects To Probe Earth's Upper Atmosphere
 
 
WASHINGTON -- NASA has selected a new satellite mission and a new space-based instrument to begin development as part of the agency's Heliophysics Explorer Program. The projects will provide space observations to study Earth's ionosphere and thermosphere.

The Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission, led by Thomas Immel of the University of California, Berkeley, will probe the extreme variability of Earth's ionosphere with in-situ and remote-sensing instruments. Fluctuations in the ionosphere interfere with signals from communications and global positioning satellites, which can have an economic impact on the nation.
     
The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission of opportunity, led by Richard Eastes of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, is an imaging instrument that will fly on a commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit to image the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere.

"One of the frontier areas of heliophysics is the study of the interface between outer space and the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere," said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "These selected projects use innovative solutions to advance our knowledge of this relatively unexplored region. The two missions together will result in significantly more advances in our understanding of Earth's atmosphere and ionosphere than either would alone."

These two Explorer projects were selected from proposals submitted in response to the NASA Explorer announcement of opportunity in 2010. The proposals were judged to offer the best science value and feasible development plans among the six concept studies submitted to NASA in September 2012.

Costs for NASA Explorer missions, such as ICON, are capped at $200 million each (fiscal year 2011 dollars), excluding the launch vehicle. Explorer missions of opportunity, such as GOLD, are capped at $55 million each. The new missions are expected to launch in 2017.
The Explorer program is the agency's oldest continuous program. It is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for principal investigator-led space science investigations relevant to the heliophysics and astrophysics programs in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

The Explorer program has launched more than 90 missions since 1958, including Explorer 1 which discovered the Earth's radiation belts and the Nobel Prize-enabling mission Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) mission. The program is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for the Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Explorer program, visit:

http://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov


For information about NASA and space science, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

 
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Offline vaporcobra

Re: Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission
« Reply #1 on: 05/25/2018 09:54 pm »
NASA Kennedy's (¯\_(ツ)_/¯) Flickr account posted some photos of Pegasus XL integration and ICON preflight checks :)


Offline Rondaz

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Re: Ionospheric Connection (ICON) mission
« Reply #2 on: 01/14/2021 03:20 pm »
Research Highlights from NASA’s GOLD Mission

Sarah Frazier Posted on January 14, 2021

A special collection of research in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics highlights the initial accomplishments of NASA’s GOLD mission. GOLD, short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, is an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph that observes Earth from its vantage point on a commercial communications satellite in geostationary orbit.

Since beginning science operations in October 2018, GOLD has kept a constant eye on Earth’s dynamic upper atmosphere, watching changes in the Western Hemisphere, marked by changes in the temperature, composition and density of the gases in this region.

A few highlights include:

Results on one source of airglow seen at night, which relies on electrons on Earth’s day side becoming ionized by sunlight, then being transported along magnetic field lines to the nightside, where they create visible airglow (Solomon, et al)

New evidence supporting the idea that the equatorial ionization anomaly appearing in the early morning — a prominent feature in the ionosphere with poorly-understood triggers that can disrupt radio signals — is linked to waves in the lower atmosphere (Laskar, et al)

New observations of planet-scale waves in the lower atmosphere that drive change in the ionosphere (Gan, et al & England, et al)
Multi-instrument measurements of plasma bubbles — “empty” pockets in the ionosphere that can disrupt signals traveling through this region because of the sudden and unpredictable change in density — that suggest they are could be seeded by pressure waves traveling upwards from the lower atmosphere (Aa, et al)

Observations showing that plasma bubbles occur frequently at all of the longitudes covered by GOLD with different onset times, providing new information on the influence of the particular configuration of the geomagnetic field at these longitudes (Martinis, et al)

Measurements of changes in the chemical composition of the thermosphere during the total solar eclipse of July 2, 2019, which give scientists an unprecedented hemisphere-wide look at how the reduction in solar radiation throughout an eclipse affects this part of the atmosphere (Aryal, et al)

https://blogs.nasa.gov/sunspot/2021/01/14/research-highlights-from-nasas-gold-mission/

Tags: NASA  ICON 
 

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