THE INTERSTELLAR BOUNDARY EXPLORER (IBEX) MISSION

It has been four years since the launch of NASA's Small Explorer mission–the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). The IBEX mission is the first to map the entire region of the boundary of our Solar System. Plasma emitted from the Sun flows outward well beyond the orbits of the planets, eventually encountering the material between the stars, called the interstellar medium (ISM). The primary focus of the IBEX mission is to determine how the plasma environment of the solar system interacts with the interstellar medium. IBEX has two detectors designed to collect and measure energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) from the edge of the solar system and beyond, providing information about the mass, location, direction of origin, and energy of these particles. From this data, maps of the boundary are created. This presentation will summarize the IBEX mission from motivation and selection, to instrumentation, launch and orbital characteristics, to the fascinating observations which have amazed the scientific community and caused theories to be overturned and models to be revised. (http://ibex.swri.edu/ )

Speaker: Sr. Steven Petrinec, Lockheed Martin