NASA Digest, Vol 56, Issue 14

	January 23, 2018  MEDIA ADVISORY M18-015 NASA Media Call Previews Upcoming Mission to Explore Atmospheric Border The lowest reaches of space glow with bright bands of color called airglow in this image captured from the International Space Station. NASA's new GOLD mission observes airglow to research this dynamic region of space and how it interacts with the upper atmosphere. Credits: NASA NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Jan. 24, to discuss the upcoming launch of the agency's mission to study where Earth's atmosphere meets space. The Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission is NASA's first science mission to fly as a hosted instrument aboard a commercial communications satellite launching from French Guiana. The launch window opens at approximately 5:20 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 25. Teleconference participants are: Elsayed Talaat, heliophysics chief scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington Richard Eastes, principal investigator at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder Susan Batiste, systems engineer at LASP/CU Katelynn Greer, GOLD research scientist at LASP/CU For information to participate in the call, media should email their name and affiliation to Karen Fox, Karen.Fox@nasa.gov by 12:45 p.m. Jan. 24. The teleconference will stream live at: https://www.nasa.gov/live For visuals to support the briefing, mission video and other media resources, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mediaresources Live launch coverage will begin on NASA Television and the agency's website at 5 p.m.  Jan. 25. Coverage will include live-streaming from the Guiana Space Centre launch site and briefings from LASP and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. GOLD will seek to understand what drives change in this region of the upper atmosphere where terrestrial weather in the lower atmosphere interacts with the tumult of solar activity from above, as well as Earth's magnetic field. Resulting data will improve forecasting models of space weather events that can impact radio communications and GPS signals, as well as satellites and astronauts in space. The instrument will fly on SES-14, built by Airbus for SES S.A., a Luxembourg-based satellite operator. LASP built the instrument, and the mission is led by the University of Central Florida in Orlando. To learn more about the GOLD mission, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/gold
	Press Contacts Dwayne Brown / Karen Fox Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1726 / 301-286-6284 dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov