IMAP-Hi

 

A diagram of a cross-sectional side view of the IMAP-Hi instrument. It shows the electrified collimator rings and collimator entrance to the inner charge conversion and electrostatic energy analyzer subsystems at the lower end of the instrument. The electrostatic energy analyzer surfaces curve from the inner vertical sides of the instrument toward the center cylinder that houses the time-of-flight sensor foils.

Cross-sectional view of an The IMAP-Hi instrument consists of an identical pair of imagers that collect, count, measure, and map energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) of energies from 0.4 to 15.6 kiloelectron volts (keV) from two different angles. Together they will be able to image the global sky. Imager, with black trajectories that highlight the path followed by ENAs. Ambient ions and electrons are deflected before they enter the A device at the entrance to a sensor instrument that narrows a beam of particles or waves, such as light or energetic neutral atoms, into a more parallel or aligned stream. This helps improve the precision and accuracy of measurements or imaging by reducing the spread of the beam; the “gateway” into a sensor..

IMAP-Hi consists of two identical, single-pixel high-energy energetic neutral atom (ENA) imagers mounted at fixed angles of 90 and 45 degrees relative to the spacecraft spin axis. These imagers measure neutral atoms entering our solar system from the outer edge of the heliosphere as they move towards the Sun. The ENA imagers collect the neutral atoms, sort them by type, and then map their incident direction from the outer heliosphere. IMAP-Hi uses a time-of-flight (TOF) section to identify hydrogen (H) and helium (He) and heavier atoms such as carbon (C), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), and neon (Ne). With each spin of the spacecraft, the imagers sample swaths in the sky that include the ecliptic poles and four additional locations in the ecliptic plane. Some low latitude regions, that contain ENA emissions from the nose and tail of the heliosphere, as well as most of the IBEX Ribbon and Belt, are sampled twice within as little as 1.5 months which allows it to explore short ENA variability.

IMAP’Hi's design and assembly is led by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in collaboration with Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), University of New Hampshire (UNH), and University of Bern (UBe).