NASA Selects Explorer Projects To Probe Earth's Upper Atmosphere

April 12, 2013

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

CONTRACT RELEASE: C13-100

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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