NASA has chosen University of California, Berkeley, to build a new space weather satellite. The satellite, which will be launched in 2017 will help scientists better understand the connection between weather at the edge of space and Earth.

The university will be given up to $200 million to build the satellite.

The satellite mission, known as 'Ionospheric Connection Explorer' (ICON), will be designed, built and operated by scientists at UC Berkeley's Mission Operations Center at the Space Sciences Laboratory.

Once the satellite is put up in space, ICON will operate in a circular orbit tilted 27 degrees from the equator and 550 kilometers (345 miles) above Earth in the ionosphere. The satellite will then collect data required to establish the connection between storms that occur near Earth's surface and space-weather storms, in order to allow scientists to better predict space weather.

The results accumulated from the analysis could help airliners to fly and land as signals from GPS satellites can be distorted by charged-particle storms in the ionosphere.

Space storms, along with solar wind, not only cause auroras, but they also can disrupt radio communications and GPS signals.

"Ten years ago, we had no idea that the ionosphere was affected and structured by storms in the lower atmosphere," said the project's principal investigator, Thomas Immel, a senior fellow at the Space Sciences Laboratory. "We proposed ICON in response to this new realization."

The University of California, Berkeley, a public research university, offers around 350 undergraduate and graduate degree programs across all the major fields.