Los Alamos Provides HOPE For Radiation Belt Storm Probes

Los Alamos National Laboratory expertise in radiation detection and shielding is poised to help a national team of scientists better understand a mysterious region that can create hazardous space weather near our home planet.

The Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) analyzer is one of a suite of instruments that was successfully launched today as part of the Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission—an effort by NASA and the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory to gain insight into the Sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying our planet’s radiation belt.

“Today we are boldly going where no spacecraft ever wants to go,” said plasma physicist Geoffrey Reeves of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Intelligence and Space Research Division. “We know we’re going into the riskiest of environments, so we’ve taken the greatest steps ensure the satellites can complete their mission.”

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