NASA captured the clearest image of Earth’s radiation belt

In a recent test on the European Space Agency’s (ESA) JUICE probe, onboard instruments operated by NASA during its lunar flight managed to capture it with an unprecedented level of detailImages of the Earth’s radiation belt, Large ring of hot plasma surrounding our planet.

The JUICE mission (the English acronym for Jupiter’s Icy Moon Explorer) has an ambitious goal ahead. In addition to exploring the gas giant’s moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, the probe will perform an unprecedented triple gravity maneuver that has never been attempted before.. It will use the gravity of the Moon, the Earth, and also Venus to accelerate towards Jupiter.

One of the tests they will carry out once they arrive at Jupiter, the instruments captured an image of Earth’s radiation belts in the first stage of performing the daring gravitational assist manoeuvre.R.. Although the magnetospheres of the two planets are quite different, some features unite them. just as they both consist of plasma, that is, charged subatomic particles..

How does Earth’s radiation belt work?

It was discovered by chance in 1958 by American physicist James Alfred Van Allen while he was designing the devices of America’s first successful satellite, Explorer 1. these belts saturated the radiation detectors of the first orbiters launched.

There are two main belts around the Earth: the inner belt, which extends from one thousand to six thousand kilometers above the surface; The outer one has an altitude of between 13 thousand and 60 thousand kilometers. There is also an intermediate region between the two, known as the “valley of nests”, with less radiation.

“The outer belt consists of billions of high-energy particles from the Sun. and the inner belt results from cosmic ray interactions with the Earth’s atmosphere” explains the NASA website.

JUICE mission

To perform this “X-ray” of our radiation belts, the JUICE probe used two instruments: JENI (English acronym for Jovian Neutrals and Energetic Ions) and JoEE (Jovian Electrons and Ions Experiment). Both were used together during the probe’s brief half-hour encounter with the Moon on August 19, as it flew 750 kilometers above the surface of our natural satellite.

Far from the Sun, passing through Earth’s magnetic tail, which contains a mixture of charged particles, JoEE and JENI passed through the region’s dense, low-energy plasma feature. Eventually, they plunged into the “heart” of the radiation belts, “getting their first taste of the hostile environment that awaited them on Jupiter,” according to NASA’s website.

To complete its “gravity slingshot,” JUICE will fly past Venus in August 2025, return to Earth in September 2026 and January 2029, and finally launch to Jupiter, where it will arrive in July 2031.

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