The finish line is far in the future, but for scientists at the University of Colorado, anticipation is already running high over their selection to spearhead the science supporting a 2024 NASA mission aimed at studying the particles streaming toward Earth from the boundaries of interstellar space.
Daniel Baker, director of CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Sciences, sees his lab’s selection for a key role in the upcoming Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission as having been earned in part through its performance for NASA in the 2015 Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, which launched four identical spacecraft into orbit around Earth to study the phenomenon of magnetic reconnection.
“We’ve proved ourselves, because of the cost effectiveness and the vast experience of LASP in dealing with scientific data acquisition and distribution. LASP has just hit it out of the park as far as doing the right thing and working effectively… bridging the gap between operations and science,” Baker said. “When you have a success like that, people take note.”
NASA said the purpose of the IMAP mission is to help researchers better understand the boundary of the heliosphere, which has been described as a sort of magnetic bubble, or cosmic filter, that surrounds and protects our solar system. It is the region where the steady barrage of particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, collides with material from the rest of the galaxy, which limits the amount of harmful cosmic radiation that enters the heliosphere.
The $492 million IMAP mission, from a “parking space” at LaGrange point 1 — a location in space about 1 million miles sunward from Earth — will collect and analyze the particles that make it through, according to NASA. CU’s researchers will be leading the science operations, along with providing one of the 10 instruments that represent its payload.
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