Van Allen Probes Radiation Belt Spacecraft 3D Model

One of the twin Van Allen Probes, launched in 2012 to study the radiation belts that surround Earth. The model shows the flat eight-sided body, four solar panels, two short magnetometer booms and long, thin wire antennas: four in the spin plane and two along the spin axis.

Technical details: about 129,000 polygons and 388,000 vertices, with 32 colour materials and no image textures. The count is dense, so decimate before mobile or VR use. It is scaled to 5 metres across its long wire antennas for AiZity's catalogue scale, so the body itself is small; the viewer opens close on the body.

The download includes GLB for web viewers and three.js, FBX for Unity, Unreal Engine and Maya, OBJ as a widely supported mesh, and BLEND for Blender. AiZity cleaned up the original (centred, grounded and renamed the parts) and converted it to these formats.

Good for space weather and radiation belt lessons, magnetosphere animations, mission explainers and physics classroom displays.

License: Public domain, made by NASA/Christopher R. Meaney (a U.S. government work). Free for personal and commercial use; please credit NASA. NASA logos and insignia are not included, and use must not suggest NASA endorsement.