Technicians carefully check the Radiation Belt Storm Probes or RBSP spacecraft A as it is being placed atop RBSP B.

Inside the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla. near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, technicians carefully check the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, or RBSP, spacecraft A as it is being placed atop RBSP B.

NASA’s RBSP mission will help us understand the sun’s influence on Earth and near-Earth space by studying the Earth’s radiation belts on various scales of space and time. RBSP will begin its mission of exploration of Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts and the extremes of space weather after its liftoff aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Liftoff is targeted for Aug. 23, 2012. For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rbsp. Photo credit: NASA/Jim Grossmann