The Living with a Star Radiation Belt Storm Probes

The goal of NASA's Living With a Star Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission is to understand, ideally to the point of predictability, how populations of relativistic electrons and ions in space form or change in response to the variable inputs of energy from the Sun. The investigations selected for this 2-spacecraft mission scheduled for launch in early 2012 address this task by making extensive observations of the plasma waves, thermal, ring current, and relativistic particle populations, and DC electric and magnetic fields within the Earth's inner and outer radiation belts. We first describe the current mission concept within the scope of NASA's strategic plan and the Vision for Exploration, and then consider how its observations will be used to define and quantify the processes that accelerate, transport, and remove particles in the Earth's radiation belts.