Space Is Closer Than You Think
Irene Klotz, Discovery News
To email this article, type in your friend's name and email address, your name and email address, and a message. Then click "submit."
Friend's name:
Friend's email:
Your name:
Your email:
Optional Message:
Message Sent!
Close to Home | Discovery News Video
Jan. 7, 2008 -- Earthlings have had an over-inflated view of how far the planet's atmosphere extends into space. Turns out, the ionosphere, the layer of electrically charged particles that comprises the outer atmosphere, is thinner than expected -- and cooler.
Understanding the shape and size of the ionosphere is an important first step in figuring out how particularly dense regions within it may distort radio, radar and navigation signals. Such distortions can make communications and satellite-based systems less reliable.
"In order to predict how severe those distortions will be, it's necessary to know how big those structures in the ionosphere are and where they exist," Roderick Heelis, with the Space Sciences Center at the University of Texas in Dallas, told Discovery News.
Hellis and his colleagues have been using a suite of NASA instruments called CINDI, which fly on the U.S. Air Force Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite between 250 miles and 530 miles around the planet's equator.
Related Content:
發表文章
0 意見:
張貼留言