UC Berkeley to construct next space weather satellite for NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has chosen the University of California, Berkeley to build a satellite that will examine how the Earth’s weather affects the weather at the edge of space. All data gathered from the satellite can be essential for enhancing extreme “space weather” forecasts that may disrupt GPS and radio communications.

Under the terms of agreement, which costs approximately $200 million, UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory is tasked to design, construct and operate the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission set for launch in 2017. UC Berkeley will command the satellite from its Mission Operations Center, which currently operates other NASA missions such as ARTEMIS, NuSTAR, RHESSI and THEMIS.

In order to enable scientists to predict space weather better, the ICON satellite will orbit at 345 mile above Earth in the ionosphere to gather data required to establish the connection between storms that occur near the Earth’s surface and space-weather storms. These can help airliners which cannot solely rely on GPS satellites to fly and land due to distorted satellite signals caused by charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.

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NASA plans on investing big for TESS, NICER projects

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently approved a grant worth $200 million to finance the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Project, which will make use of space telescopes to evaluate the sky and possibly discover new transition exoplanets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. Focusing particularly on planets similar to Earth, the survey project will cover 400 times as much sky as its former missions.

Aside from the TESS project, which is anticipated to launch in 2017, NASA also granted funds for the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), designed to measure the variability of cosmic x-ray sources (x-ray timing) from the International Space Station (ISS).

The TESS and NICER projects are both included as part of NASA’s Explorer program, one of its oldest continuous programs designed to provide inexpensive access to space. Satellite mission grants are capped at $200 million, while space station mission costs are capped at $55 million.

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