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NASA has taken advantage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch a new mission to study the protective bubble around our solar system.
SpaceX will launch the International Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, for NASA in October 2024 under a $ 109.4 million deal. The mission will launch from the Space Launch Complex 40 platform at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and will also carry four smaller payloads, including the Moon-bound Trailblazer Lunar probe, NASA officials said in a release.
“IMAP will help researchers better understand the boundary of the heliosphere, a magnetic barrier that surrounds our solar system,” NASA officials wrote in the Sept. 25 statement. “This region is where the constant stream of particles from our sun, called the solar wind, collides with the winds of other stars. This collision limits the amount of harmful cosmic radiation that enters the heliosphere.”
Related: Solar test: How well do you know our sun?
IMAP will be stationed at a stable point between Earth and the sun known as the Lagrange point 1, where it will map interstellar particles traversing the heliosphere and study how they accelerate through space, according to NASA’s mission description. The $ 492 million mission was selected in 2018 as part of NASA’s Earth-based solar probe program.
The Lunar Trailblazer probe launched with IMAP is a small spacecraft designed to study water on the moon. A space weather tracking probe, called the Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 mission, will also launch with IMAP for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Two other payloads, both NASA heliophysics missions, will join IMAP at launch, but have yet to be announced, the space agency said.
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him at @tariqjmalik. Follow us on @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
