NASA Technology Center to Develop Sensor for Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) Mission

The Space Systems Company’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) has been named to lead development of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)-Lo sensor for the NASA Small Explorer mission. The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) awarded the contract to the ATC. IBEX is the first mission designed to globally image the extreme edge of our solar system. Launch of the IBEX spacecraft is scheduled for 2008.

IBEX-Lo is one of two sensors on the Small Explorer spacecraft that will measure neutral atoms created by the interaction of the solar wind with the interstellar medium the gas, dust and radiation environment between the stars. These neutral atoms are created beyond the orbit of Pluto and then enter our solar system. The energy bands are split into two ranges, one measured by IBEX-Lo and the other by IBEX-Hi. A team at Los Alamos National Laboratory and SwRI will build the IBEX-Hi sensor.

The IBEX spacecraft will be in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth, where it will make all-sky “images” of the arriving neutral atoms every six months for two years. Dr. Stephen A. Fuselier will be the lead investigator
for IBEX-Lo and Eric Hertzberg will serve as the lead engineer. Both are members of the ATC’s Space Physics Department. The overall project is under the direction of the principal investigator, Dr. Dave McComas at SwRI.

“It’s like sitting inside a giant bubble and getting a picture of the walls from the inside out,” explains Dr. Fuselier. “The continuous wind from the Sun the solar wind keeps the bubble inflated, and the edges of our solar system are defined by the interaction between this wind and the surrounding interstellar medium. By measuring the number of arriving neutral atoms at a variety of energies, we can determine many of the properties of the boundaries of our solar system.”

An appreciation of the physics that underlies the interstellar boundary will allow scientists to better understand how the out-flowing solar wind mediates the in-flowing radiation from the galaxy. The regula Advanced Technology Center to develop sensor for Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission freeze, many of the same chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth. The Huygens descent and touchdown is the most distant descent by a robotic probe ever attempted on another object in the solar system. Over the course of the orbital mission, Cassini will have executed 45 flybys of Titan, coming as close as approximately 590 miles above the surface.

This will permit high-resolution mapping of the moon’s surface with an imaging radar instrument that can see through the opaque haze of Titan’s upper atmosphere. The second largest planet in our solar system (after Jupiter), Saturn serves as a natural laboratory to better understand the formation of our solar system
five billion years ago because the planet and its rings are a close analog to the disc of gas and dust surrounding
the nascent Sun that formed the planets. Detailed knowledge of the dynamics of interactions among Saturn’s elaborate rings and numerous moons will provide valuable data for understanding how each of the solar system’s planets evolved.

The Cassini spacecraft was launched on a Lockheed Martin-built Air Force Titan IV/Centaur rocket in 1997. The Cassini propulsion module also built by Lockheed Martin is the largest U.S. planetary spacecraft propulsion system ever built. It was fired 17 times en route to Saturn and will be ignited approximately 150 more times before the end of the mission. In addition to DISR, the Titan IV/Centaur and the propulsion system, Lockheed Martin designed and built the three radioisotope thermoelectric generators that power spacecraft systems. tion of this radiation could have affected the formation and evolution of life on Earth, and thus might provide a means for examining the probability of life around other stars.

Additionally, at such boundaries roughly 90 percent of cosmic radiation is deflected away from the inner solar system, so by understanding their properties scientists will be better able to model the process that may have provided an environment favorable for life on this planet. The IBEX-Lo sensor will be built by a team of scientists and engineers at the ATC in Palo Alto, Calif., the University of New Hampshire in Durham, N.H., SwRI in San Antonio, Tx., and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. After the sensor is integrated at the ATC, it will be calibrated at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

The Explorer Program is designed to provide frequent, low-cost access to space for physics and astronomy missions with small to mid-sized spacecraft. NASA has successfully launched six Small Explorer missions since 1992. The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the Explorer Program for the Science Mission Directorate.