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17 Jun 2002
NASA's Polar spacecraft, scheduled for a February launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), CA, is a key element of a constellation of satellites which promise to revolutionize understanding of the Sun's influence on Earth's space environment.
"Polar will launch space physicists on a new voyage of discovery and exploration," said Dr. Robert Carovillano, Polar Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. "Polar is the main link in a very critical chain of laboratories in space which will study both the very inner and outer frontiers of the chain of processes which intimately connects the Sun with the Earth and the other planets. This launch marks the beginning of a new era in our understanding of the interactions of these tremendous forces."
The final mission in NASA's Global Geospace Science (GGS) program, the Polar laboratory will be launched in an orbit which loops over the Earth's poles for a three-year mission to study the movement of energetic charged particles above the polar regions. It will give scientists new perspectives on how Earth's space environment is affected by continual bombardment from radiation and particles from the Sun, data which eventually could help scientists forecast "space weather".
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