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The GOLD mission of opportunity is the first to image the Earth鈥檚 thermosphere-ionosphere (T-I) system鈥攖he boundary between Earth and space鈥攆rom geostationary orbit. It will also be the first NASA science mission to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite.

GOLD, which is scheduled for launch later this year, will study the T-I system鈥檚 response to forcing from the Sun and the Earth鈥檚 lower atmosphere.

In an April 5听talk, GOLD principal investigator Richard Eastes听will discuss how these measurements will give the scientific community a new perspective on the T-I system and the effects of space weather.

The mission will fly an ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, built by LASP, to observe the T-I over most of the American hemisphere at a thirty-minute cadence. From the dayside observations, simultaneous images of the composition and temperatures in the lower thermosphere will be obtained. At night, images of the peak electron densities in the low latitude ionosphere will be obtained.

Our lack of understanding of how composition and densities in the thermosphere and ionosphere respond to forcing is a major contributor to uncertainties in predicting space weather.

Consequently, GOLD鈥檚 global scale imaging will provide new insights into the response of the T-I system to solar extreme ultraviolet radiation, geomagnetic activity, and the waves and tides originating in Earth鈥檚 lower atmosphere. In addition, since GOLD repeatedly images the same geographic locations, it provides context for measurements from low Earth orbit or from the ground.