What is the heliosphere? IMAP launches to disentangle the mysteries of this complex cosmic environment

Around our solar system is a natural and enigmatic cosmic shield called the heliosphere – and a new mission has launched to help astronomers better understand it.

Created by the solar wind, a constant flow of loaded particles which move away from the sun, the heliosphere acts as a huge bubble which protects the planets of our solar system against cosmic radiation impregnating the Milky Way, our domestic galaxy.

In addition to the protective magnetic field of the earth, the heliosphere plays a major role in the reason why life is possible on our planet – and how it may have used to be on others as Mars.

More than half a dozen missions have contributed to the way astronomers include the heliosphere, and two sustainable spacecrafts, traveling probes, collected key data after leaving the heliosphere to explore the interstellar space.

But the new IMAP probe, or interstellar cartography and acceleration probe, the mission is designed to study how the sun forms its solar wind and how this solar wind interacts with the interstellar space at the limit of the heliosphere, which begins three times the distance between Earth and Pluto, according to NASA.

The 10 instruments of the spacecraft will also fill the gaps in the existing map of the heliosphere, reconstructed from the data collected by the previous missions, and help to explain more how the heliosphere largely protects our solar system by damaging the cosmic rays, the most energetic particles of the universe.

With two other space meteorological missions that left the same rocket on Wednesday, IMAP will help scientists better predict when the sun storms unleashed by the sun could affect our planet. When it is intended for earth, the severe radiation of storms, also known as spatial time, may present risks for astronauts from the international space station as well as interfere with communications, the electricity network, navigation and radio and satellite operations.

“This next series of missions is the ultimate cosmic carpooling,” said Dr. Joe Westlake, director of the NASA heliophysical division during a press conference on Sunday. “They will provide an unprecedented overview of the space weather. Each human on earth, as well as almost all the systems involved in spatial exploration and human needs, are affected by the space weather. ”

The heliosphere was first theorized by several scientists studying the concept of cosmic rays and the solar wind in the late 1950s, according to NASA. They thought that the sun provided a network of magnetic fields and solar wind which created a border surrounding the earth and the rest of the solar system.

Mariner 2, the first successful mission on another planet which carried out an overview of Venus in 1962, was also the first to measure the solar wind, proving its existence. The direct measures taken by the Pioneer 10 and 11 missions in the 1970s, as well as the traveling probes, provided additional evidence of the heliosphere.

Scientists are impatient to know what the limits of the heliosphere look like, something that the traveling probes have offered attractive glimpses in the past. These are the only two spacecraft to cross the heliosphere.

Traveling 1 reached the limit of the heliosphere in 2012, while the slower travel 2 crossed the border in 2018, providing snapshots in two specific locations. The information collected by these probes helps scientists to discover the form of comet of the heliosphere.

IBEX, or explore interstellar limit, satellite has been mapped the heliosphere since its launch in 2008. But IMAP can explore and map the boundaries of the heliosphere like never before because it has instruments with faster imaging which is capable of a resolution 30 times higher.

Once it has reached an orbit of around 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) of the earth in about three months, IMAP also captures the observations of the solar wind in real time and will measure the particles that travel from the sun, study the border of the heliosphere between 6 billion and 9 billion kilometers (9.7 billion at 14.5 billion kilometers), and even collect data from data interstelary space.

Mainly, the IMAP will measure neutral energy atoms, called ENAS, or the unwanted particles which are formed when an energetic loaded ion collided with a neutral atom with slow movement. The process that forms these particles, found wherever there is plasma, or loaded gas, in space, also occurs throughout the heliosphere and along its border. The IMAP will rely on the monitoring of these particles to create a more complete map of the heliosphere, according to NASA.

The particles move in a straight line, not affected by the magnetic fields because they are not loaded, therefore IMAP can collect ENAS near the earth and trace them at their origins, like the otherly invisible limits of the heliosphere, according to NASA.

“The IMAP will make incredibly detailed images that will evolve over time of this region of interaction,” said Dr. David McComas, principal researcher of IMAP and astrophysicist at Princeton University. “He will be able to understand what shielding is, how shielding works and what it looks like.”

McComas added that our solar system is not the only one to have something like a heliosphere, and brilliant astrospheres have been identified around other stars.

The IMAP launched alongside the Carruthers Geocorona observatory of NASA and the SWFO-L1 of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or Space Weather follow on Lagrange 1, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket of Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida on Wednesday at 7:30 am and. NASA has released live launch on Youtube.

The Carruthers Geocorona observatory is a small satellite which will be dedicated to the observation of the exosphere, or the most external atmospheric layer of the earth. The Carruthers mission will capture images of the low ultraviolet gleam of the region, called Geocorona, to help answer questions about the form, size and density of the exosphere.

The mission bears the name of Dr George Carruthers, who developed an ultraviolet camera as the first observatory based on the moon which was placed during the Apollo 16 mission. The camera, still in place in the Descartes Highlands region on the Moon, photographed the earth in an ultraviolet light and captured the first image of the exosphere in 1972.

The Carruthers mission will measure the changes and effects of space weather once it reaches the earth, since the exosphere marks a transitional border between earth and space.

Meanwhile, the SWFO-L1 mission aims to act as a solar storm detector, providing early warnings to protect astronauts in low and satellite orbit which provide critical communications on earth. It is a tool that will be even more necessary while astronauts venture further into deep space.

“I think we are improving … But a really solid forecast, I think, is always something we are looking for,” said Mark Clampin, interim assistant assistant administrator of the NASA scientific mission, during a press conference for the next Artemis II mission of the agency around the Moon. “And obviously, the missions that we implement now will give us much better on the only element of the problem, but the whole problem, of what is happening on the sun in the way it is spreading from the sun, and if it becomes a real problem or not.”

The compact compact telescope of the satellite will monitor the sun for activity and measure the solar wind, providing a constant flow of data to the NOAA space prediction center. Images of solar storms taken by the satellite can be sent to the center within 30 minutes, while other current missions, such as NASA and the solar and helospheric observatory of the European Space Agency, launched in 1995, can take up to eight hours.

“SWFO-L1 essential data is our life buoy to keep the lights on, flying planes and safety satellites, ensuring that America is ready for what the sun sends us,” said Clinton Wallace, director of the Noaa space prediction center.

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