Story highlights The target area is home to communications satellites -- and colorful light bands

NASA also has named two finalists for future robotic missions far beyond Earth

(CNN) A NASA mission launches this month 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 will be the first NASA science mission to fly an instrument on a commercial communications satellite when it launches January 25 from French Guiana, the agency said. More details about the mission were announced Thursday from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

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.

This illustration shows the GOLD mission.

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

The mission will examine the response of the upper atmosphere to forcing 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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