NASA launches IBEX

New York, Oct 20 (PTI) The US space agency has launched
Interstellar Boundary Explorer Mission (I.B.E.X.) to image and
map dynamic interactions taking place in the outer solar
system.


Explaining the mission, the agency, N.A.S.A. Sunday
said just as an impressionist artist makes an image from
countless tiny strokes of paint, I.B.E.X. will build an image
of the outer boundary of the solar system from impacts on the
spacecraft by high-speed particles called energetic neutral
atoms.


These particles are created in the boundary region when
the one-million mph solar wind blows out in all directions
from the sun and plows into the gas of interstellar space.
This region is important to study because it shields many of
the dangerous cosmic rays that would flood the space around
Earth.

"No one has seen an image of the interaction at the
edge of our solar system where the solar wind collides with
interstellar space," said I.B.E.X. Principal Investigator
David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San
Antonio.

"We know we're going to be surprised. It's a little
like getting the first weather satellite images. Prior to
that, you had to infer the global weather patterns from a
limited number of local weather stations. But with the weather
satellite images, you could see the hurricanes forming and the
fronts developing and moving across the country."

The mission was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in
the Pacific Ocean.

After a 45-day orbit raising and spacecraft checkout
period, the spacecraft will start its science mission.

I.B.E.X. is the latest in N.A.S.A.'s series of
low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers spacecraft. PTI DS
BDS