: Image: Walt Feimer/Goddard Space Flight CenterNASA will launch its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) Oct. 19, on a mission to explore the interaction of our sun and solar system with the galaxy. IBEX will orbit 200,000 miles above the Earth and capture the first-ever images of our solar system's boundaries.
The mission will help us visualize our place in the galaxy and learn how the interaction between our sun and the galaxy beyond may have evolved. Scientists will get a better look at the solar wind — the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere that is expanding out into the galaxy as a plasma moving at a million miles an hour. The plasma creates a bubble, known as the heliosphere, that protects the solar system against radiation from galactic cosmic rays.
Left: Once the IBEX spacecraft is in low-Earth orbit, a solid rocket motor will burn for 75 seconds to give it a final boost into position, pointing at the sun and ready to deliver data.
: Photo: Southwest Research Institute Once the hardware and software was loaded aboard IBEX, technicians performed a series of stress tests. The spin test is shown here.
: Image: NASA GSFCThe primary mission of IBEX is to explore the edge of our solar system and how it interacts with the galaxy beyond.
: Image: NASA GSFCThe heliosphere, pictured here, separates our solar system from the interstellar medium and fends off galactic cosmic rays.
: Image: Walt Feimer/Goddard Space Flight CenterIBEX will study coronal mass ejections, depicted here, which are flows of plasma made up primarily of electrons and protons that propagate from the sun.
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteOne of IBEX's two sensors. Each time an energetic neutral atom comes into one of the sensors, it is recorded.
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteOne of two sensors aboard IBEX is shown here. As the spacecraft slowly rotates, its sensors will capture information from the entire 360 degrees in a process that takes six months.
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteEngineers work in a clean room using jumper cables to test the connections between the side panels (shown at left and right) that hold the sensors and the rest of the spacecraft (center).
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteThe complete IBEX payload with both sensors is inserted into the thermal vacuum chamber for testing in space-like conditions.
: Photo: NASA/VAFBThe IBEX spacecraft is mounted on the front of the Pegasus rocket prior to being enclosed in the protective outer fairing.
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteTechnicians at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California help guide the Star-27 kick motor and nozzle that will propel IBEX during the final leg of its journey into orbit.
: Photo: Southwest Research InstituteInside a protected clean room tent at Vandenberg Air Force Base, both halves of the fairing are installed around the IBEX spacecraft. The fairing is a molded structure that fits flush with the outside surface of the rocket and forms an aerodynamically smooth nose cone, protecting the spacecraft during launch and ascent.
