NASA rocket to study effects of fugitive radio waves in space Illustration of the Van Allen belts NASA NASA NASA is launching a suborbital sounding rocket to study how radio waves escaping the Earth's ionosphere may be affecting orbital satellites. Scheduled for launch from the Wallops Island Flight Facility on May 26, the VLF trans-Ionospheric Propagation Experiment Rocket (VIPER) will measure how these escaping radio waves interact with electrons in the Van Allen belt. Space may seem like a very large, empty ... well, space, but if one looks at it in the electromagnetic spectrum, it...