Van Allen belts

In 1958, Dr. James Van Allen discovered a collection of high-energy particle clouds within 40,000 km of Earth.

Arranged like two nested donuts, the inner belt is mainly energetic protons, while the outer belts contain both protons and electrons. These belts have long been known as 'bad news' for satellites and astronauts, with potentially deadly consequences if you spend too much time within them.

The belts are normally two levels an inner and outer with a gap in between them, depending on times of high solar activity that can produce three belts or rarely blast away the top belt momentarily.

each of two regions of intense radiation partly surrounding the earth at heights of several thousand kilometres.