"LAUREL, Md. -- NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes, robotic satellites launched last August, have now revealed a previously unknown third radiation belt around the Earth."

"'We thought we knew the radiation belts, but we don’t,' said Nicky Fox, Van Allen Probes deputy project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel. This lab team built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA.

'Even 55 years after their discovery, Earth’s radiation belts still are capable of surprising us,' said Fox.

Earth’s two radiation belts were one of the first discoveries of the Space Age. They are named after James Alfred Van Allen, an American space scientist at the University of Iowa."

Environment News Service had the story February 28, 2013. [2]