The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory is scheduled to launch at the earliest today (September 23rd) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From there, it will monitor the upper layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, known as the exosphere. That is, if the mission gets to its location correctly after a successful launch this morning on board a Falcon 9 rocket. Image from the original Carruthers mission as part of Apollo 16 in 1972. Credit - G. Carruther (NRL) et al. Learn More:NASA - New NASA Mission to Reveal Earth’s Invisible ‘Halo’UT - ExosphereUT - To Find Another Earth, We Need to Understand Atmospheric EscapeUT - What Is The Atmosphere?