Science in REAL time: CubeSat poised to explore Earth’s radiation belts

Just a short distance inland from the waves crashing against California’s shore, NASA’s Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss (REAL) CubeSat mission launched into the sky, taking off at 2:13 p.m. ET on July 23 from Vandenberg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.