RICHARDSON (AP) - A 20-pound device set to be carried into space on a satellite may help researchers predict "storms" that often rage high above the earth and disrupt certain radio communications.
The University of Texas at Dallas is conducting a five-year, $10 million investigation for NASA and the Air Force to determine the time, place and duration of the next storm in the ionosphere - the outer part of the earth's atmosphere that starts about 80 miles above the earth.
"Space is not a placid vacuum, but has weather not dissimilar to that on earth," said Rod Heelis, a physics professor and director of the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences at UTD. "However, instead of rain, storms in space involve electrically charged particles that move around in the equivalent of hurricanes and tornadoes."
The storms - raging up to 600 mph - can disrupt certain communications systems as the charged and neutral particles interact. The likely result is that communications will be "messed up," Heelis said.
Jan Denoyer, deputy program manager for the Air Force Research Lab in Albuquerque, said the military is interested in determining why its communications systems don't work at certain times. That helps them eliminate other possibilities, like enemy jamming or equipment malfunction.
Jim Byrd, the project's mission manager for NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said NASA has similar goals for the project.