Posted: Sat, Apr 13, 2013, 10:23 AM ET (1423 GMT)
NASA announced late Friday the selection of two missions, a spacecraft and a commercially hosted payload, to study the Earth's upper atmosphere. The Ionospheric Connection (ICON) spacecraft mission, led by the University of California Berkeley, will fly a spacecraft in Earth orbit to study the extreme variability of the Earth's ionosphere. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission, led by the University of Central Florida, features an imaging instrument placed on a commercial communications satellite in GEO to study the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere. The two missions are part of NASA's Explorer program of low-cost astrophysics and heliophysics missions, with a cost cap of $200 million for ICON and $55 million for GOLD. Both are expected to fly in 2017.

Related Links:

•  Florida Today article
•  Orlando Sentinel article
•  NASA press release