The NASA Van Allen Probes mission
will go further and gain scientific understanding (to the point of
predictability) of how populations of relativistic electrons and ions in space
form or change in response to changes in solar activity and the solar wind.
NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts–funded studies have proposed magnetic
scoops to collect antimatter that occurs naturally in the Van Allen belts of
Earth, although it is estimated only about 10 micrograms of antiprotons exist
in the entire belt.
The Van Allen Probes mission was
successfully launched on August 30, 2012.[5] The primary mission is scheduled
to last 2 years, with expendables expected to last for 4 years. NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center manages the overall Living with a Star program of which Van
Allen Probes is a project, along with Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The
Applied Physics Laboratory is responsible for the overall implementation and
instrument management for the Van Allen Probes.
Van Allen radiation belts do exist on
other planets in the solar system, whenever a planet or moon has a magnetic
field that is powerful enough to sustain a radiation belt. However, many of
these radiation belts have been poorly mapped. The Voyager Program (namely
Voyager 2) only nominally confirmed the existence of similar belts on Uranus
and Neptune.
