Washington -- The U.S. space agency has announced plans to use a flotilla of more than 40 high altitude balloons to study radiation in the Earth's Van Allen Belts.
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration awarded $9.3 million to Dartmouth College for the research in which the balloons will be used to study radiation that can be hazardous to astronauts, orbiting satellites and aircraft flying in high altitude polar routes.
The mission -- called the Balloon Array for Radiation-belt Relativistic Electron Losses, or BARREL -- will fly in 2013 and 2014 and will be led by Assistant Professor of physics and astronomy Robyn Millan. NASA said BARREL is expected to provide answers to how and where the Van Allen Belts, discovered in 1958, periodically drain into Earth's upper atmosphere.
"This experiment will be the first of its kind in establishing a web of balloon-borne sensors working hand-in-hand with a satellite mission," said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "In addition to the groundbreaking science that BARREL will provide, this kind of use of NASA's suborbital program is vital for training the next generation of scientists in a wide range of areas."
Copyright 2007 by United Press International.
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