Glossary:
K and L

N.. O.. P.. Q.. R.. S.. T.. U.. V.. W.. X.. Y.. Z..

L

L1 libration point

The point about one one-hundredth of the way from the Earth to the Sun, where the gravitational pull of the Earth and Sun and centripetal force balance in such a way as to give an orbit of exactly one Earth year. The ACE and SOHO spacecraft are both at L1.

LANL

The Los Alamos National Laboratory, a research center in New Mexico devoted to national defense, the applications of nuclear energy, and basic research in physics, biology, chemistry, geothermal energy, and medicine.

More about LANL...

Live time

The time that an instrument is "live" and taking data. Usually no instrument is live 100% of the time, because it has to stop taking new data to grab and transmit the old data. The percentage of time that an instrument is live can vary as it does different things. This number is important for normalizing data to get the number of particles (for a cosmic ray instrument) hitting the instrument, which is larger than the number of particles analyzed.

Light year

The distance light travels in a year, about 10 trillion kilometers, or 6 trillion miles.

Lunar

Having to do with the moon.

N.. O.. P.. Q.. R.. S.. T.. U.. V.. W.. X.. Y.. Z..