Sun-Earth partner for NASA

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has awarded a $600 million, 12-year contract to the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory for research, design, development, mission operations and related technology for the Sun-Earth Connection, Living With a Star (LWS) and Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) programmes.

LWS and STP will comprise a continuous sequence of flexible low cost missions to study the relationship of the sun and the Earth and the behaviour of the sun during its 11-year solar cycle.

Further LWS projects include launching spacecraft constellations to study the Earth's radiation, the sun and the Earth's ionosphere.

Source: Flight International