NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, aka IBEX, will on 19 October lift off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands on a mission to probe the interstellar boundary beyond our heliosphere's termination shock1 - a region where "the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space", as NASA nicely puts it.
From an altitude of roughly 200,000 miles (322,00km) at apogee, and beyond interference from the Earth's magnetosphere, IBEX will focus its two single-pixel "cameras" on Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs)2 to capture "images of processes taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system".
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/07/ibex_launch/
Nasa: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/index.html
Spacecraft prepares to sniff interstellar boundary
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission, known to its chums as IBEX, was yesterday successfully projected heavenwards on its mission to "image and map dynamic interactions taking place in the outer solar system".
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/ibex_launch/
Nasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) spacecraft has been launched into Earth orbit to study the edge of our Solar System.
Ibex was launched on Sunday aboard a Pegasus rocket that was dropped from a jet flying over the Pacific Ocean.
It is the first probe to study particle interactions at the boundary where our Solar System meets interstellar space.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7679647.stm
Video here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7679637.stm
The first results from Nasa's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) spacecraft have shown unexpected features at our Solar System's edge.
Ibex was launched nearly one year ago to map the heliosphere, the region of space defined by the extent of our Sun's solar wind.
Ibex's first glimpses show that the heliosphere is not shaped as many astronomers have believed.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8309179.stm