NASA Spacecraft Ready To Explore Outer Solar System

Yesterday, NASA launched its first spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space. It will start its two-year mission at Kwajalein Atoll which is a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The spacecraft is called IBEX which stands for Interstellar Boundary Explorer. The spacecraft will conduct high-altitude orbits above Earth to investigate and take pictures of processes taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system. Known as the interstellar boundary, this area marks where the solar system meets interstellar space. The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which otherwise would penetrate into Earth's orbit and make human spaceflight much more dangerous," said David J. McComas, IBEXs principal investigator. Other spacecraft have continued the exploration of the interstellar boundary region. Recently, a pair of NASA sun-focused satellites detected a higher-energy version of the particles IBEX will observe in the heliosphere. The heliosphere is an region that contains the solar wind. It stretches from the sun to a distance several times the orbit of Pluto. "What makes the IBEX mission unique is that it has an extra kick during launch. An extra solid-state motor pushes the spacecraft further out of low-Earth orbit where the Pegasus launch vehicle leaves it" stated Willis Jenkins, IBEX program executive at NASA Headquarters. The IBEX mission is the next in NASA's series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers spacecraft. The mission was developed by Southwest Research Institute with national and international partner participation. IBEX is poised to thoroughly map this interstellar boundary region of the solar system. The pictures will let scientists understand the global interaction between our sun and the galaxy for the very first time.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/ExploringTheOuterSolarSystem.html

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