Van Allen Probes: NASA renames radiation belt mission to honor pioneering scientist
Sunday, November 11, 2012 - 11:01
in Astronomy & Space
NASA has renamed a recently launched mission that studies Earth's radiation belts as the Van Allen Probes in honor of the late James Van Allen. Van Allen was the head of the physics department at the University of Iowa who discovered the radiation belts encircling Earth in 1958.