Visualization of ICON's orbit around Earth. (Courtesy of NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio)
At 9:59 p.m. EDT this evening, Thursday, Oct. 10, NASA launched the Ionospheric Connection, or ICON, mission, putting into Earth orbit a satellite built largely at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory to explore the dynamic region where Earth meets space, the ionosphere.
The mission is the first dedicated to studying how terrestrial weather can help drive space weather above, in the region where our upper atmosphere overlaps with the lowest reaches of space - a dynamic region where changes can disrupt radio, cell phone, and GPS communications used to guide airplanes and ships.
The launch aboard a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket dropped from an L1011 airplane was originally scheduled for June 2018 over the Pacific Ocean, but various glitches pushed it back to a fall 2019 launch window over the Atlantic.
The L1011 lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, at 8:31 p.m. EDT before flying to an altitude of 39,000 feet and releasing the Pegasus rocket carrying the refrigerator-sized satellite. The solar panels that power the spacecraft successfully deployed after it reaching an orbit of about 360 miles. After an approximately month-long commissioning period, ICON will begin sending back its first science data in November.
"After years of work, I'm excited to get into orbit and turn on the spacecraft, open the doors on all our instruments," said UC Berkeley's Thomas Immel, ICON principal investigator. "ICON carries incredible capacity for science. I'm looking forward to surprising results and finally seeing the world through its eyes."
