Story highlights The NASA GOLD mission launched Thursday from French Guiana

(CNN) A NASA mission launched Thursday to explore the zone between Earth's atmosphere and the lowest reaches of space, where key communications satellites orbit amid bright bands of color known as airglow.

Dubbed the GOLD mission -- for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk -- it is the first NASA science mission to fly an instrument on a commercial communications satellite. It launched at 5:20 p.m. ET today from French Guiana, the agency said.

The near-space environment is important because it's home to technology that is key to human communication, such as satellites that provide information for GPS systems and radio signals that help guide ships and airplanes.

It's also where astronauts live on the International Space Station.

The mission will examine the response of the upper atmosphere to force from the sun, the magnetosphere and the lower atmosphere. Learning more about the ionosphere, part of Earth's upper atmosphere where the sun's radiation collides with gas that breaks into electrons and ions, is key. This dynamic environment is always changing and could easily garble radio signals coming through our atmosphere. The mission will be able to see how exactly it affects our day-to-day life.

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