Technicians remove NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) spacecraft from its shipping container inside the high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, May 29, 2025. The observatory will study how the Sun shapes the boundaries of the The bubble-like region surrounding the solar system inflated by the solar wind, shielding the solar system from interstellar radiation., the bubble protecting around our Solar System, and is targeted for launch this fall aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy.
Image Credit: NASA Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman
Technicians removed NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) spacecraft from its shipping container on Thursday, May 29, after transferring it from the airlock into the high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The IMAP spacecraft arrived at the facility on May 10, coming by truck from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Over the next several months, technicians will prepare the IMAP observatory for launch. Some key upcoming milestones include loading the spacecraft with propellant, joining it with two other spacecraft catching a ride on the same rocket, and encapsulating all three spacecraft together inside the protective payload fairing. Technicians then will transport the encapsulated spacecraft to a hangar at NASA Kennedy, where the team will integrate the spacecraft with its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is targeting launch no earlier than September 2025 from Launch Complex 39A.
As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP also will explore and chart the vast range of particles in The area of space found surrounding and between planets of a star system., helping to investigate two of the most important issues in The study of the Sun and its connection to the solar system, including the physical processes that occur in the space environment.: the energization of charged particles from the Sun and the interaction of the A stream of charged particles, mostly protons and electrons, that escapes into the Sun's outer atmosphere at high speeds and streams out into the solar system in all directions. with interstellar space. The IMAP mission plans to provide near real-A measure of the flow of events. information about the solar wind to improve advanced The conditions and activity observed in interplanetary space caused by the Sun’s activity, such as solar flares, solar storms, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Severe space weather conditions directed towards Earth can impact infrastructure and technology on Earth, as well as satellites, spacecraft, and astronauts in its trajectory. warnings from its location at Lagrange Point 1, or Lagrange Point 1 is an orbital path in space about one million miles from Earth towards the Sun that is without any magnetic interference from the planets., located about one million miles away, between the Earth and Sun.
Technicians remove protective coverings from NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) inside the high bay at the Astrotech Space Operations Facility near the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, May 29, 2025.
Image Credit: NASA/Amber Jean Notvest
Launching with IMAP are NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On L1 satellite, both of which will arrive in Florida later this year. This mission will be NASA’s Launch Services Program’s 9th mission to fly on a Falcon 9 rocket.
Learn more on NASA's IMAP Blog.
The IMAP mission is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Program mission within the agency’s Heliophysics Division. 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. The Explorers and Heliophysics Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at NASA Kennedy, manages the launch service for the mission.