Technicians inside a pair of clean rooms at the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Florida, are busily readying a trio of spacecraft that will study the Sun and its effects on Earth and across the solar system.
The primary mission among the trio is NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which will use a suite of 10 instruments to study the Sun’s sphere of influence, referred to as the heliosphere. It’s joined by the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, another NASA mission, and the Space Weather Follow-On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) observatory from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The trio will ride atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to begin a months-long trip to a celestial parking spot known as Lagrange 1, roughly a million miles from Earth en route to the Sun. All three spacecraft are fueled for launch, which is scheduled for no earlier than Sep. 23.
Joseph Westlake, Director of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate’s Heliophysics Division, said recent events like the total solar eclipse in 2024, widespread auroras, and marquee missions, like Parker Solar Probe, have really put a spotlight on studying the Sun.
“You can think about the solar wind, the space weather as it’s coming towards the Earth and the measurements that IMAP is going to make of those particles as they go forward,” Westlake said. “And then, if you think of the Sun as really blowing up this big bubble of the heliosphere, IMAP is going to deliver a unique understanding of our home in space.
“And so, as all of that comes together, along with the multitude of other missions that we’ve launched, even just this year, it is a wonderful time to be a heliophysicist.”
David McComas said even though IMAP is the third NASA mission for which he’s serving as the principal investigator, the final prelaunch campaign is still a bevy of mixed emotions.
“I’m feeling great and I’m also feeling terrified because this is that time when everything comes together and if there’s any issue that pops up at the last minute, or any concern, you know, it can set back the launch and that can be very expensive and sort of divert the whole team,” McComas said.
“As all of it comes together, the impact of anything happening gets worse, so you’re kind of afraid of that. But at the same moment, you’re really just incredibly excited because you know the morning of the 23rd, right at sunrise, we’re going to be launching and it’s going to be the most spectacular thing for all of us who spent 10 years or more working on this mission.”
IMAP is truly a global effort with input from 35 states and from six partner countries. More than half of its 12 instruments will study short-term and long-term space weather.
Inside one of the Astrotech clean rooms, Rosanna Smith, the instrument integration and test lead for IMAP, adorned in a protective garment referred to as a “bunny suit,” said bringing together the science instruments from teams around the world was both “very smooth” and also a thrill.
“Working with the instrument teams was actually awesome because there’s 10 institutions, 12 instruments all around the world,” Smith said. “We traveled, actually, to their reviews. We followed them throughout their process and then when they came to us, we integrated them onto the spacecraft, each one, and it was very, very cool.”
Amber Dubill, the deputy lead mechanical engineer for IMAP, said that teams were doing their final checkouts of the spacecraft.
“We’re pretty close to done. We’re doing final inspections and then we’ll roll over to mate with our ride shares on the launch vehicle,” Dublil said.
Similarly to IMAP, NOAA’s SWFO-L1 observatory will also be studying space weather. It helps augment the agency’s role in keeping the public and property safe from all types of weather events.
Richard Ullman, NOAA Space Weather Observations Director, said one of the key differences between his agency’s spacecraft and IMAP and Carruthers is that SWFO-L1 is designed as a science application mission, not a research science mission.
“We are looking at the same phenomena for the application of being prepared for the space weather that’s going to impact us,” Ullman said. “We’re hoping that these, IMAP and Carruthers, will improve our knowledge and make us able to make better forecasts. But what we’re doing here is the operational forecast, the day to day.”
Ullman said SWFO-L1 will be capable of sending back solar weather data in less than five minutes and can send alerts of coronal mass ejections about 15 to 30 minutes prior to them impacting the Earth. He said that kind of early warning system can help different industries, like utility companies and airlines prepare for the interference from strong solar weather.
Rounding out the trio of spacecraft is Carruthers, named for Dr. George Carruthers, an astronautical engineer and astronomer who developed and built an ultraviolet electronographic telescope that was flown to the Moon during Apollo 16. It was designed to help study Earth’s outermost atmospheric layer: the exosphere or geocorona.
“This geocorona, the edge of our atmosphere that extends to at least halfway to the Moon. We don’t even know its shape or size,” said Kelly Korreck, Carruthers Program Scientist. “So, it’s really meaningful to have this mission named after him because he’s the one who pioneered this technology.”
Like the other two missions, Carruthers will also study space weather, specifically, it’s interplay with this exosphere, and how well it can dissipate the energy from solar storms. Korreck said it can also provide insight into some key differences between Earth and Mars.
“We saw that on Mars, water was lost through its exosphere and now it’s kind of a barren desert. No water,” Korreck said. “How does that change? What’s the difference of our atmosphere versus Mars? And then, what does that say for life on other planets outside our solar system?”
