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An instrument that will collect and analyze ions — charged particles — has been integrated into NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. This instrument, known as the Solar Wind and Pick Up Ion (SWAPI) instrument, will help scientists understand how ions behave in the protective bubble surrounding the solar system called the heliosphere, helping provide situational awareness of the very nature of space that our satellites travel through.

Using SWAPI and 10 other instrument suites, IMAP will sample, analyze, and map particles streaming to Earth from the edges of interstellar space to help researchers better understand the boundary of the heliosphere. The mission will also help researchers learn more about the generation of cosmic rays in the heliosphere, which can affect human explorers in space and can harm technological systems, and likely play a role in the presence of life itself in the universe. The mission is slated to launch in 2025.

The ions SWAPI will capture include ones from the solar wind — the constant stream of particles from the Sun — as well as one called interstellar pick-up ions, which originate outside the solar system and have been energized by radiation or other particles from the Sun. Both types of ions will allow scientists to study how these charged particles interact at the outer edge of the heliosphere from afar.

The instrument’s data will also provide temperature, density, and speed information about the local ion conditions around IMAP. This information will enable space weather to be measured in real-time. Furthermore, the data from SWAPI will increase our understanding of how changes in Sun’s behavior affect the solar wind.

The persistence and creativity of the SWAPI team allowed them to successfully iterate the design of the instrument to accommodate the technical challenges posed by the necessary high voltage operations. With SWAPI’s integration, IMAP is now equipped with seven out of its total 10 instrument suites.

The SWAPI instrument was designed and assembled by Princeton University. Princeton University professor David J. McComas leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 25 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory builds the spacecraft and operates the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Solar Terrestrial Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, are poised to deliver the High-energy Ion Telescope (HIT) instrument. HIT was shipped from Goddard to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. A group of engineers at APL have now begun the process of installing HIT onto NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft.

A YouTube livestream shows the cleanroom where the spacecraft will be built and tested over the next year on Princeton University’s IMAP mission website. Viewers can watch the continuous stream to see exactly how the IMAP hardware develops from a bare-bones structure to the complex, fully operational spacecraft.

 HIT is the fourth of 10 IMAP instruments to arrive at APL. Over the two-year-long mission, HIT will measure high-energy solar energetic particles expelled from the Sun in the highest-energy processes in our solar system. These solar particles can produce the beautiful aurora, or northern and southern lights, but are also hazardous, posing risks to the health and safety of astronauts as well as presenting a danger to space- and ground-based assets and infrastructure. Understanding the acceleration and transport of this high-energy radiation will help us better understand our Sun and the local space weather to which these particles play a critical role. 

“Solar energetic particles have been studied since the start of the space age, yet we still don’t understand their origin well enough to predict when they will be a danger,” said Eric Christian, HIT instrument lead and deputy principal investigator of the IMAP mission at NASA Goddard. “HIT, combined with other instruments on IMAP, will provide an important piece of the puzzle.” 

IMAP, which is led by Princeton University, is slated to launch in 2025 and will journey roughly one million miles to a point in space between Earth and the Sun called Lagrange Point 1. During the mission, HIT will measure energetic ions and electrons to help us learn more about the processes that can accelerate these particles to such high energies.

Building on Heritage

HIT builds upon techniques that are decades old but modernizes them with state-of-the-art instrumentation and clever detector design. When charged particles pass through HIT, they deposit some of their energy in layers of detector material until they finally come to rest. By looking at the energy deposited in the different layers through which the particle passed and comparing it with the energy deposited in the stopping layer, HIT can determine the type (proton, electron, or different ions) and energy of the particle.

The arrangement of 10 apertures, or openings, on HIT and the spin of the IMAP spacecraft will allow HIT to measure particles from all directions and study the energetic particles patterns when  striking the instrument. HIT also measures energetic electrons, which arrive at Earth quickly and can give us an early warning to upcoming space weather events. 

The Work of a Team

HIT would not be possible without its dedicated and diverse group of scientists, engineers, and technicians at NASA Goddard and the California Institute of Technology. The HIT team includes many early career scientists and engineers who got the exciting opportunity to take on leadership roles and rose to the challenge. For many, this will be the first time they will have the unique opportunity to work on something going to space.

“I am so grateful to have the opportunity to play an integral role in such an exciting mission,” said Grant Mitchell, a member of the HIT science team at NASA Goddard. “The chance to learn from world-class scientists and engineers both at Goddard and throughout the IMAP team has been instrumental in preparing me to lead my own missions one day.”

Princeton University professor David J. McComas leads the mission with an international team of 25 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, builds the spacecraft and operates the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Another of the instruments planned for flight aboard NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is ready for installation on the spacecraft.

IMAP-Ultra is a particle imager capable of capturing energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), particularly hydrogen atoms and is the third instrument to be delivered for integration. Engineers will now perform a series of tests to ensure Ultra can properly communicate with the spacecraft before it is fully integrated into the IMAP structure and into the onboard electronics system.

IMAP-Ultra is one of three imagers on IMAP that capture ENAs traveling from the boundary of our solar system. When charged particles from the solar wind reach our outer heliosphere, they interact with interstellar neutral particles and transform into ENAs. ENAs still retain information about the original charged particles, but losing their charge allows them to travel through space unbounded by the Sun’s magnetic field and eventually reach IMAP. The three imagers will capture data on ENAs at varying energy levels.

IMAP-Ultra also features unique gold-plated blades that deflect charged particles, allowing only neutral atoms to reach the instrument’s sensor.

Princeton University professor David J. McComas leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 25 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, builds the spacecraft and operates the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) has successfully completed Key Decision Point D (KDP-D). This milestone allows the mission to move from development and design to the assembly, testing, and integration phase. IMAP’s planned launch date, which was no earlier than February 2025, was also reevaluated during the KDP-D and was moved to a target launch window from late April to late May 2025 to ensure that the project team has adequate resources to address risks and technical complexities during system integration and testing.

IMAP will function as a modern-day cartographer and will help us understand what happens when the solar wind (a constant stream of particles from the Sun) collides with materials from interstellar space. This will help researchers map the boundary of the heliosphere, the magnetic bubble created by the solar wind, and better understand how this magnetic bubble protects Earth from large amounts of harmful cosmic radiation. IMAP will be positioned about one million miles from Earth, and its instruments will collect and study the particles that make it through the heliosphere. 

Principal investigator and Princeton University professor David McComas leads the IMAP mission, which has an international team of more than 20 partner institutions. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is managing the development phase, is building the spacecraft, and will operate the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

The public can watch the spacecraft come together in real time via a live feed from APL’s clean room, which is now available to watch at any time on the IMAP mission website. Viewers can watch the continuous stream to see exactly how IMAP develops from a bare-bones structure to a complex, fully operational spacecraft.

The mechanical team is preparing to install the Medium Gain Antenna on the IMAP spacecraft. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Princeton/Ed Whitman

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is embarking on its yearlong integration and testing campaign, during which all of the instruments and components will be added to the spacecraft structure, tested to ensure they will survive the harsh environments of launch and space, and made ready to execute its mission.

On Sept. 19, the spacecraft returned to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, after a trip to Aerojet Rocketdyne, where the propulsion system was added. The spacecraft was then transported to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where it underwent thermal testing.

“We are thrilled to have the spacecraft back at APL and to embark on the main elements of the system build,” said John Scherrer, the program manager for IMAP at APL. “The next several months will be very exciting as we see the IMAP spacecraft come together.”

The IMAP mission, which will be ready to launch in 2025, will explore our solar neighborhood, decoding the messages in particles from the Sun and beyond our cosmic shield. The mission will map the boundaries of the heliosphere — the electromagnetic bubble surrounding the Sun and planets that is inflated by the solar wind. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will also explore and chart the vast range of particles in interplanetary space, helping to investigate two of the most important overarching issues in heliophysics: the energization of charged particles from the Sun and the interaction of the solar wind at its boundary with interstellar space.

Princeton University professor and principal investigator, David J. McComas leads the mission with an international team of more than 20 partner institutions. APL is managing the development phase, building the spacecraft, and will operate the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Dave McComas said, “I am very proud of our entire team, who have come together from 25 institutions around the world to find creative solutions, solve challenging problems, and get us to this point. That teamwork will continue to be needed in the coming months to ensure the components of the mission are integrated and tested successfully.”

The public can watch alongside APL and other team member experts working on IMAP. A YouTube livestream of the cleanroom, where the spacecraft will be built and tested over the next year, is now available to watch at any time on the IMAP mission website. Viewers can watch the continuous stream to see exactly how the IMAP team takes us from a bare-bones structure to the complex, fully operational IMAP spacecraft.

Over the next several months, IMAP’s 10 instruments will arrive at APL from all over the world and be integrated into the spacecraft structure one by one. Once all of the instruments and the spacecraft’s various other subsystems and components are integrated, the IMAP team will begin a rigorous testing campaign. Finally, the spacecraft will be shipped back to Goddard to finish testing before launch.

“In the near future, IMAP will help provide important insights into the Sun’s heliosphere,” said Patrick Koehn, IMAP program scientist at NASA Headquarters. “Now, however, we have a unique opportunity to see the work it takes to prepare the spacecraft to make those observations, advancing our understanding of the solar system we live in.”

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) marked the completion of an important step on the path to spacecraft assembly, test, and launch operations this week at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland.

The IMAP team met with a review panel to evaluate the plan for integrating all systems onto the spacecraft, such as the scientific instrumentation, electrical and communication systems, and navigation systems. Successful completion of this System Integration Review (SIR) means that the project can proceed with assembling and testing the spacecraft in preparation for launch. This process is a bit like a carefully choregraphed dance where the instruments and support systems are delivered to different facilities, tested together in chambers in Los Alamos, New Mexico; San Antonio, Texas; and Princeton, New Jersey; and shipped back to be integrated and tested again altogether.

On Friday, Sept. 15, 2023, the chair of the Standing Review Board announced that the IMAP project successfully passed the SIR requirements to proceed to integration and test.

“I am incredibly proud of the entire IMAP team for everyone’s hard work and determination in getting us to and through this critical milestone,” said David McComas, IMAP mission principal investigator and Princeton University professor. “We are now moving on to spacecraft integration and test, where all of the individual subsystems and instruments merge together to create our full IMAP observatory.”

The IMAP mission, which will be ready to launch in 2025, will explore our solar neighborhood, decoding the messages in particles from the Sun and beyond our cosmic shield. The mission will map the boundaries of the heliosphere – the electromagnetic bubble surrounding the Sun and planets that is inflated by the solar wind.

David McComas leads the mission with an international team of more than 20 partner institutions. APL is managing the development phase, building the spacecraft, and will operate the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about IMAP visit: https://imap.princeton.edu

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission held a critical design review (CDR) last week with a NASA Standing Review Board (SRB). This mission-level review was the culmination of individual CDRs conducted for all the instruments and subsystems. While there are still challenges ahead to face as a team, the review board is confident that IMAP has a plan to succeed.

Although CDR is often a gate to spacecraft construction, IMAP has already begun building important components such as instrument engineering and flight models as well as parts of the structure. With 10 instruments designed and built globally, the complicated dance of testing, cross-calibrating, and integrating these pieces is carefully choreographed so that the completed observatory will be ready for launch in 2025.

IMAP will explore our solar neighborhood, known as the heliosphere, and decode the messages in particles from the Sun and beyond. Three of the instrument suites will work together to build detailed maps of the boundaries of the solar system using energetic neutral atoms, which travel from the edge to Lagrange point 1 (L1), the point between the Sun and Earth where gravitational forces balance. IMAP’s other instruments collect information from the Sun’s solar wind and provide timely updates about space weather conditions.

The SRB chair noted that IMAP was “good to go” and had a lot of work to do.

Princeton University professor and IMAP Principal Investigator David J. McComas expressed his gratitude to the board for the good questions and said, “New challenges will surely emerge between now and launch, but I have every confidence in the awesome, committed, and resilient team that we have assembled to carry out this challenging mission.”

“We’re finally starting to see the integration of all these efforts, which is absolutely remarkable for me,” said Deputy Principal Investigator Nathan Schwadron. “We started with an idea. We proposed the concept, and then there’s this shift of momentum into actually making the hardware, building the spacecraft, getting them to work together. It really is our commitment to discovery as a team that helps make the transition from concept to reality.”

McComas leads the mission with an international team of 24 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, is building the spacecraft and will operate the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

To learn more about the IMAP mission visit the website: https://imap.princeton.edu

By Lindsay Bartolone
IMAP Communications Lead for Princeton University

NASA and the UK Space Agency have agreed to cooperate on NASA’s heliophysics mission, the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). The agreement, signed Sept. 22, 2021, will allow Imperial College London (ICL) to design and build one of IMAP’s 10 instruments – a magnetometer called MAG – as well as provide ground support and personnel necessary to support the instrument and the IMAP science team.

Scheduled to launch in 2025, IMAP will observe and map the Sun’s heliosphere – the volume of space filled with particles streaming out from the Sun, known as the solar wind – and study how it interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond. The boundary zone at the edge of the heliosphere offers protection from the harsher radiation of interstellar space; it may have played a role in creating a habitable solar system and is critical in NASA’s plans for safe human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

MAG will contribute to our understanding of the acceleration and transportation of charged particles in the heliosphere. It will do this by measuring the interplanetary magnetic field around the spacecraft. From these measurements, MAG will identify interplanetary shocks and measure the waves and turbulences that scatter particles.

MAG will also provide measurements for the IMAP Active Link for Real-Time (I-ALiRT) space weather monitoring service. With I-ALiRT, IMAP will enable new ways of forecasting space weather by streaming real-time observations of conditions headed towards Earth to operators on the ground.

MAG is a dual sensor fluxgate magnetometer and includes electronics, a power supply system, and an on-board computer. The two sensors are located on a boom to reduce the effects of magnetic interference from the spacecraft.

“The UK and the United States are working together on some of the most exciting space missions of our time, from the Mars Perseverance rover to the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Dr Paul Bate, Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency. “There is still so much we don’t know about the Sun and the behaviour of phenomena like the solar wind. This new partnership will help NASA answer some of these questions, using the expertise of scientists at Imperial College London. It is an excellent example of the importance of international collaboration in the study and exploration of our solar system.”

“IMAP will be doing some really exciting science that neatly fits with expertise we have at Imperial, both for understanding how particles get accelerated to the highest energies, and how our Sun interacts with our neighbourhood in the galaxy,” said Science Lead for MAG, Professor Tim Horbury from the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.

“The rest of the IMAP team and I are so pleased to have this partnership with the UK Space Agency and Imperial College London” said Professor David McComas, the IMAP principal investigator. “International collaboration such as this makes our mission even stronger.”

David McComas of Princeton University leads the IMAP mission and an international team of 24 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will build the IMAP spacecraft and operate the mission for NASA. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio and newest addition to NASA’s fleet of heliophysics spacecraft. The Heliophysics Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe – IMAP – has completed a key milestone in mission development. After rigorous review, IMAP has passed what is known as Key Decision Point C, or KDP-C, which marks the mission’s progression from formulation to implementation.

As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will chart the very boundaries of the heliosphere – the bubble surrounding the Sun and planets that is inflated by the solar wind – and study how it interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond.

These measurements will help scientists better understand fundamental physics of the heliosphere and our place in the stellar neighborhood at scales both tiny and immense. It will also help scientists understand how the interaction of solar and stellar winds forms a barrier that shields the inner solar system from harmful cosmic rays, which will help protect astronauts.

IMAP will launch into orbit of Earth-Sun Lagrange point 1 – a location towards the Sun about a million miles from Earth ­– no earlier than 2025.

David McComas of Princeton University leads the IMAP mission and an international team of 24 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, will build the IMAP spacecraft and operate the mission for NASA. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio and newest addition to NASA’s fleet of heliophysics spacecraft. The Heliophysics Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

To accommodate schedule changes due to precautions regarding COVID-19, the preliminary design review for NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, has been moved from February to May 2021. Similarly, the launch readiness date is delayed from Oct. 1, 2024, to Feb. 1, 2025.

Over the course of its mission, IMAP will explore and map the boundaries of our heliosphere – the volume of space filled with the wind from the Sun – and study how it interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond. These boundaries, which offer protection from the harsher radiation of interstellar space, may have played a role in creating a habitable solar system, and are critical in enabling safe human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Designed with 10 scientific instruments to measure a large range of particles and fields, IMAP will investigate how particles are accelerated and determine the composition of particles and dust in our local neighborhood. IMAP also will enable and mature new ways of forecasting space weather, including geomagnetic storms and solar energetic particles, through streaming real-time observations to the ground.

IMAP will launch on a  Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket provided by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California. This launch will include several other Rideshare missions: NASA’s Global Lyman-alpha Imagers of the Dynamic Exosphere, NASA’s Solar Cruiser, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow-On L1.

Princeton University professor, David J. McComas leads the mission and an international team of 24 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland builds the spacecraft and operates the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Heliophysics Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.