GOLD & ICON Mission

NASA’s Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) and Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission will provide unprecedented global-scale imaging of the temperature and composition at the dynamic boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.While GOLD has been launched, ICON is in the process of launch.

• GOLD and ICON will team up to explore the ionosphere, a boundary area between Earth and the space where particles have been cooked into a sea of electrically-charged electrons and ions by the Sun’s radiation. These layers of near-Earth space are increasingly becoming a part of human domain as it is home to radio signals used to guide airplanes, ships and Global Positioning System satellites.