Going for GOLD: Exploring the Interface to Space

GOLD is a new NASA science mission that launches in January 2018 to explore Earth’s interface to space!GOLD stands for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk. It will inspect the dynamic region of near-Earth space where space and Earth’s uppermost atmosphere meet. Historically difficult to observe, this is a little understood region that responds both to the lower atmosphere below and the tumult of space weather from above.GOLD is a hosted instrument roughly the size of a mini-fridge that will fly aboard a commercial communications satellite, SES-14 — and it’s the first NASA science mission to do so.