Japan Launches Satellite to Study Earth's Radiation Belts

Japan launched a satellite on Tuesday (December 20) to study Van Allen radiation belts of the Earth, i.e., the regions where its magnetic field traps particles that are highly charged. The satellite, called Exploration of energization and Radiation in Geospace (ERG), was launched from Uchinoura Space Center in southern Japan. It was launched on board an Epsilon Launch Vehicle.

The ERG has nine devices to study the near-Earth radiation which consists of fast-moving particles that can cause damage to the astronauts' health as well as the devices on board the craft. The ERG will see how the high-energy electrons are "accelerated and created and how space storms develop", the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency or JAXA officially said. It also said the satellite would carry out a comprehensive observation near the equatorial plane in the geospace where the acceleration of the electrons is said to take place.

The Japanese space agency hoped that the satellite will succeed in touching a highly elliptical orbit located about 215 miles to over 18,600 miles above the Earth. If it manages to do that, the probe initiative would make it to the Van Allen radiation belts, said a Tech Times report.

However, Japan isn't the only country to have undertaken such space initiative. In 2012, NASA also launched two robotic spacecraft called the Van Allens probes that not only revealed how the belts protects the planet from harmful high-cosmic rays but also gave clues as to why the region can swell at times in response to the energy that comes from the sun.

The Van Allen Belts surrounding the planet were discovered in 1958 while four years ago, observations from the probes showed that a third belt could also appear at times. Besides Earth, planets like Jupiter and Saturn are also known to have radiation belts.