NASA’s Ionosphere Connection Explorer (ICON) spacecraft is in orbit after its successful launch on Thursday, October 10 of 2019. A Northrop Grumman Stargazer L-1011 aircraft carried ICON, on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket, to an altitude of 39,000 feet. Aircraft crew released the rocket at 9:59 p.m. EDT and from there, the rocket’s automated systems launched ICON into space. Since then, ICON deployed its solar panels, indicating it’s fully powered with all systems operating. The spacecraft will begin sending back data in November.
The Northrop Grumman Stargazer L-1011 aircraft getting ready for takeoff at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Statio on October 10th 2019. The aircraft carried the Pegasus XL rocket with ICON aboard the rocket. (Image Credit: NASA)
ICON’s objective is to study changes in the ionosphere, a region in the upper atmosphere that interferes with communication signals and gets bombarded by weather from space and the Earth. Space weather in the ionosphere can cause early decay on spacecraft orbits and pose radiation-related health risks to astronauts. This region has been difficult to observe in the past because spacecraft can’t travel through the low parts of the ionosphere and it’s too high for balloons to reach.
“ICON has an important job to do – to help us understand the dynamic space environment near our home,” said Nicola Fox, director of heliophysics at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “ICON will be the first mission to simultaneously track what’s happening in Earth’s upper atmosphere and in space to see how the two interact, causing the kind of changes that can disrupt our communications systems.”
Four instruments on ICON will be observing the connections between the neutral atmosphere and the electrically charged ionosphere. Three of the spacecraft’s instruments will observe airglow, a phenomenon of colorful bands in the upper atmosphere.
Airglow is created from a similar process as the aurora, but instead of occurring in the north and south latitudes, airglow develops across the globe and is fainter than an aurora. It’s also bright enough for ICON to create an image of the ionosphere’s density, composition and structure. The spacecraft will also observe how particles move in that region. The fourth instrument gives direct measurements of the ionosphere around ICON. It characterizes the charged gases immediately surrounding the spacecraft.
The ICON spacecraft will be taking measurements of the ionosphere. (Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith)
The spacecraft is in a circular orbit at a 27-degree inclination and is located 357 miles above the Earth’s surface. This enables it to study the ionosphere around the equator. ICON’s instruments will be pointed at the lowest boundary of space to get a view of what’s going on in that area, which is about 55 miles up to 300 miles above the surface. It only takes the spacecraft 97 minutes to circle around the Earth, giving ICON the opportunity to sample a wide range of latitude, longitude and local times.
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