Van Allen Belt Mystery Solved With Student-Built Satellite

Oh, that Van Allen Belt—online crackpots love to use Earth’s belt of radiation to bolster their Moon landing conspiracies, suggesting it could be too strong for an astronaut to travel through (not true). But the truth is, scientists do think about the Van Allen Belt and its mysteries. They’ve launched probes to study the region since they weren’t sure where some of that radiation came from. The belt consists of charged particles like protons and electrons trapped by Earth’s magnetic field between 300 miles and 25,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. More

(Source: Gizmodo - Dec 14)