 When America's first satellite, Explorer 1, launched more than three decades ago, it discovered the Van Allen radiation belts that surround the Earth. And ever since, radiation has caused more than a few problems for the satellites that have followed. They fail from radiation. That's one of the primary failures we have. We have a lot of problems in having to go back and reprogram spacecraft because the radiation hits. Now, this spacecraft, called the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite, or CRES, will help remap the radiation belts and... By using that, we can determine what types of radiation protection need to be put on future spacecraft. Future spacecraft will also benefit from new solar power panels being tested aboard CRES. Standard panels like these, which will actually power the CRES satellite, could someday be replaced by panels like this, which are doubly efficient. CRES will also light up the sky with a year-long series of experiments that will focus in on energy generated by solar storms, energy that can disrupt radio transmissions and power supplies here on Earth. Flying an egg-shaped orbit, CRES will release chemical tracers into both the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. It will be like painting magnetic field lines in space so that they're visible from the ground. These will be closely examined using ground-based telescopes and special aircraft. And one of the aims of CRES is to do specific experiments in the space surrounding Earth to study how these disturbances propagate, how they grow and decay, with an idea toward being able to predict in the future when these disturbances will occur and how large they will be. CRES is a joint NASA and Air Force project that's managed for NASA by the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. An Atlas Centaur rocket will launch CRES with its 20 scientific instruments and 24 canisters filled with chemical tracers. Just as its ancestor, explorer Juan, did many years ago, CRES will blaze a new trail that's sure to help clear the way for space flights to follow. In Huntsville, this is Mike Errington reporting.