IMAP Observatory

About IMAP

The IMAP spacecraft appears against a starry sky background. The solar array can be seen, with the MAG boom arm stretching from the top deck of the spacecraft away from the viewer. Six instruments are pictured across the center of the spacecraft from left to right: IDEX, CoDICE with GLOWS below it, SWAPI with SWE below it, and IMAP-Ultra 90.

An artist’s depiction of NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) spacecraft.

Image Credit: NASA/Princeton/Patrick McPike

The IMAP Observatory is composed of the spacecraft, subsystems, and instruments. Launching in 2025, IMAP carries 10 cutting-edge science instruments that work together to map our solar neighborhood, or The bubble-like region surrounding the solar system inflated by the solar wind, shielding the solar system from interstellar radiation., by decoding messages found in cosmic messenger particles that come from beyond our stellar bubble. IMAP also makes near real-A measure of the flow of events. observations 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. and the constituents that are carried with it, such as pick-up ions, and changes in its magnetic energies. 

IMAP's suite of instruments are built at partnering institutions across the U.S., as well as in London, UK and Warsaw, Poland. IMAP launches on a two-stage Falcon-9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center and reaches its final solar The curved path, usually elliptical, described by a planet, satellite, spaceship, etc., around a celestial body, such as the Sun; also called orbital path. at L1 using onboard propulsion.

Princeton University professor David J. McComas leads the 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. IMAP is the fifth mission in NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program portfolio. The Explorers and The study of the Sun and its connection to the solar system, including the physical processes that occur in the space environment. Project Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the STP Program for the agency’s Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.