UNH Readies Instrument to Study Sun’s Interactions Out into Galaxy

After six years of extensive preparations and testing by a UNH-led team, a space instrument dubbed IMAP-Lo is now aboard a spacecraft and is readying for flight in 2025 to help scientists learn more about the sun's interactions in the heliosphere and its environment in the nearby galaxy. The installation of IMAP-Lo onto the spacecraft is a significant milestone in the UNH team's contributions to NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission.

The IMAP mission, led by Princeton University, studies two of the most critical problems in heliophysics: the sun's interaction with our local galactic environment, and the related question of how energetic particles are accelerated to high energies due to solar wind interactions throughout our heliosphere - the enveloping boundaries around the sun, the Earth and all the planets that helps to protect us from interstellar radiation.

The UNH team recently delivered their IMAP-Lo instrument to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, to go through integration with the other instruments. IMAP-Lo is one of 10 instruments that comprise IMAP; it will measure low-energy neutral atoms from the local galactic medium in the vicinity of the sun. It will also capture images of the interactions with the heliosphere using energetic neutral atoms.

IMAP-Lo carries components made at UNH, Southwest Research Institute, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the University of Bern, and Sierra Space. Its central time-of-flight system was assembled at Princeton University, and the instrument was calibrated at Princeton University, UNH and the University of Bern.

Engineers and scientists have performed extensive tests to ensure IMAP-Lo can properly communicate with the spacecraft and function with spacecraft systems.

"Our team has surmounted an incredible array of hurdles to reach this point. We are proud to deliver an outstanding instrument to IMAP that will allow us to take the next quantum leap in understanding the properties of the outer heliosphere and local interstellar medium," says Nathan Schwadron, lead for IMAP-Lo and one of two deputy principal investigators for the mission. "IMAP-Lo directly measures the atoms in space that travel through our solar system from the local galactic medium. The instrument is capable of pivoting to track the interstellar flow throughout the year, and is capable of imaging the low energy energetic neutral atoms critical for understanding how our solar wind interacts with and inflates the protective envelope that surrounds our solar system."

The public and scientific community are invited to witness the livestream of the cleanroom at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where the spacecraft is currently being integrated with its scientific payloads and tested. Viewers can watch the stream at any time to witness the various stages of spacecraft assembly.

Princeton University professor David J. McComas leads the IMAP mission with an international team of 25 partner institutions. The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland builds the spacecraft and operates the mission. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) program portfolio. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency's Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.