DAPHNE

A NASA-selected mission concept to research how space weather and dynamics within Earth’s atmosphere influence the space environment and help improve prediction capabilities for impacts on crucial technology, such as GPS and low Earth orbit satellites, as well as astronauts in space. The DAPHNE mission’s low-risk high-return concept will provide coordinated, multi-point measurements of neutral winds, temperature, and composition in the thermosphere. The ionosphere and thermosphere regions are where Earth’s neutral atmosphere transitions into the ionized plasma of space. In this thin shell that surrounds the planet, the atmosphere is in constant motion, shaped by the influence of solar activity and changes in the lower atmosphere and in near-Earth space. The DAPHNE mission was proposed as a concept study in response to the DYNAMIC (Dynamical Neutral Atmosphere-Ionosphere Coupling) mission announcement of opportunity.