Twenty NASA balloons studying the radiation belts
Tuesday, February 5, 2013 - 13:00
in Astronomy & Space
In the bright, constant sun of the Antarctic summer, a NASA-funded team is launching balloons. There are twenty of these big, white balloons, each of which sets off on a different day for a leisurely float around the South Pole to collect information about something far more speedy: the rain of particles that can precipitate out of two gigantic donuts around Earth known as the radiation belts.