NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the overall Living With a Star program of which RBSP is a project, along with Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) was responsible for the overall implementation and instrument management for RBSP.

[4] The spacecraft worked in close collaboration with the Balloon Array for RBSP Relativistic Electron Losses (BARREL), which can measure particles that break out of the belts and make it all the way to Earth's atmosphere.

The probes were projected to cease operations by early 2020, or whenever they ran out of the necessary propellant to keep their solar panels pointed at the Sun.

The Van Allen Probes were built to help scientists understand this region and to better design spacecraft that can survive the rigors of outer space.

[2] The mission's general scientific objectives were to:[2] In May 2016, the research team published their initial findings, stating that the ring current that encircles Earth behaves in a much different way than previously understood.

During geomagnetic storms, the enhancement of the ring current is due to new, low-energy protons entering the near-Earth region.

[2] Because it was vital that the two craft make identical measurements to observe changes in the radiation belts through both space and time, each probe carried the following instruments: