Radiation Belt Storm Probe

RBSP Rides ULA Atlas V to 'Storm' Heaven's Secrets
By Jason Rhian

Photo Credit: Mike Killian – ARES Institute / AmericaSpace
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla — NASA’s twin Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) satellites slowly, steadily rode a Atlas V 401 launch vehicle to orbit Saturday, Aug. 30 at 4:05 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41). This is the second scientific mission launched under NASA’s “Living With a Star” (LWS) program and is designed to further scientists’ understanding of how the Sun powers space weather.


The Atlas V launch vehicle used to power this mission to orbit is the 401 configuration. This means that the rocket employed a four meter fairing and had no solid rocket boosters. Photo Credit: Julian Leek / Blue Sawtooth Studios
The primary concern this evening was thick or Cumulous clouds in the area. Weather turned out to be a non-issue and the United Launch Alliance (ULA) team sent the Atlas rocket loose right on schedule. Weather caused a scrub during the second launch attempt on Aug. 25.

The first launch attempt took place on Aug. 24 was caused due to a C-band beacon determined to be “out of family” with previous hardware. Technicians removed and replaced the beacon from the top of the Atlas’s Centaur stage. These two scrubs actually marked the third delay of RBSP’s launch, which had been slated for Aug. 23, but an anomaly was detected in a similar engine and engineers requested additional time to review the data.

NASA launched the first mission under the “Living With a Star” program, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in February of 2010. Much like SDO, RBSP will provide a better understanding of the Sun’s influence on Earth by studying the Earth’s radiation belts through a variety methods.

The RBSP satellites boast a suite of scientific instruments that will work to quantify the plasma processes that produce the highly-charged particles that create space weather. This weather has a negative impact on a wide range of devices that make modern life possible. These include the Global Positioning System (GPS), television and telecommunication systems, power grids, satellites and other services.