On Wednesday, September 24 at 7:30 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 launched NASA’s IMAP mission from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Photos captured by Satnews.
IMAP, or the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, is a NASA heliophysics mission that will map the boundaries of the heliosphere: the large bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our entire solar system.
This was the second flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously supported KF-01. Following stage separation, the first stage landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.
IMAP will study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond and will support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions near Earth.
Falcon 9 launched IMAP into a transfer orbit that will take it to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point — a gravitationally stable region 1.5 million kilometers from Earth (directly between Earth and the Sun) where the Sun and the Earth’s gravity essentially balance each other. Also on board the mission is NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1, which will also head to the Earth-Sun L1 point.