Van Allen Belts

The Van Allen Probes have been set on a trajectory that will plunge the radiation belt satellites into the Earth's atmosphere. In order to keep the pair of spacecraft from becoming a hazard to navigation, a series of thruster maneuvers will place them in ever-tightening orbits ending around 2034.

​On this day 60 years ago, America became the second country to send a human-made object into low-Earth orbit, with the successful launch of its first satellite – Explorer 1.

The idea of putting a Star Trek-like force field around the entire Earth seems like the fodder for a fairly silly science fiction epic out of the 1930s, but according to space scientists, such a barrier already exists.