Space Environment Testbeds Overview

The Space Environment Testbeds (SET) Project performs flight and data investigations to address the Living With a Star (LWS) Program goal of understanding how the Sun/Earth interactions affect humanity. It is the part of the LWS program of Science Missions and Targeted Research and Technology (TR&T) ground-based investigations that respond to the following questions:

• How and why does the Sun vary?
• How do the Earth and planets respond?
• What are the affects on humanity?

SET uses existing data and new data from the low-cost SET mission to achieve the following:

• Define the mechanisms for space environment effects
• Reduce uncertainties in the environment and its effects on spacecraft and their payloads
• Improve design and operations guidelines and test protocols so that spacecraft anomalies and failures due to environmental effects during operations are reduced.

Living With a Star’s (LWS) program is a part of the Heliophysics Division…more

Latest News

01.2019 – A Brief History of Space Climatology: From the Big Bang to the Present

09.21.16 – NASA Spacescraft Fly in Record-setting Formation

12.14.15 – Escape of the Destructive Electrons

05.02.14 – Carrington-class CME Narrowly Misses Earth

02.28.13 – Van Allen Probes Discover a New Radiation Belt

03.22.12 – Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earth's Upper Atmosphere

04.18.11 – Joint Air Force-NASA Mission To Study High-radiation Orbits (Space News)

01.14.11 – Build-up of static electricity turned satellite into zombie (Spaceflight Now)

09.29.10 – Space radiation hits record high (NewScientist)

08.06.10 – A Solar Tsunami (SKY and Telescope)

07.16.10 – Space Weather Turns into an International Problem

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Recent SET News

> The SET payload, consisting of 4 board experiments and a space weather monitor, is currently undergoing spacecraft level environmental tests at Kirtland Air Force Base, NM.

> Depiction of the SET payload on the AFRL Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) spacecraft