NASA has just awarded the University of Central Florida the largest single grant in the history of the school in order to study space weather.
UCF was awarded a $55 million NASA grant to build and launch into space an instrument the size of a microwave oven that will provide unprecedented imaging of the Earth’s upper atmosphere –making UCF the first Florida university to lead a NASA mission.
The project mission is designed to collect information to better understand space weather, such as solar winds as well as its impact on communication and navigation satellites.
“It’s great to see something that my team and I have worked on for years selected for funding,” said Richard Eastes, a research scientist with UCF’s Florida Space Institute. “It shows that other scientists think what we’re planning to do is some of the most important science in the world. And for UCF, it’s a chance to demonstrate that the university can play a more significant role in space research. “
The project is a collaboration between UCF, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, and the commercial satellite company SES Government Solutions. UCF will oversee the project and build the data center that will collect, process and distribute the data for the mission. LASP will build the compact instrument, which will operate in a geostationary orbit, and SES is scheduled to launch it on one of its communication satellites in 2017.
“It’s clear that NASA is interested in flying more instruments on commercial satellites,” Eastes said. “With today’s budgets, most science missions that need a geostationary orbit aren’t affordable unless they fly on a commercial satellite.”
The five-year project will begin immediately, UCF says. Once the design is finished and checked, rechecked and rechecked again, LASP will begin construction. After launch in 2017 the instruments will provide data to the team, and other scientists throughout the world, for at least two years. Eastes says the instruments will likely continue to function for an additional three to five years.
Other members of the GOLD team that will be supporting the mission include the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of California at Berkeley, Computational Physics Inc. and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
