The NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer, IBEX, spacecraft was launched on October 19, 2008 to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. The IBEX payload include two Energetic Neutral Atom, ENA, instruments, IBEX-Lo and IBEX-Hi, which measure 10 eV to 2 keV neutrals and 300 eV to 6 Kev neutrals, respectively. The ENA measurements are indicative of charged particle populations near and beyond the termination shock of the heliosphere. The spacecraft was initially placed into a geocentric, eight day orbit with a perigee of 7000 km and an apogee of 37 Earth radii. This orbit exposed the spacecraft to a higher than desired level of radiation. So, the orbital perigee was raised in June 2011 to greater than 7 Re (out of the radiation belts) via the execution of three orbital maneuvers. The revised IBEX orbital period, equal to ~9.1 days, is in a three-to-one (3:1) resonance with that of the Moon around the Earth in order to minimize gravitational interactions. The spin axis of the IBEX spacecraft is adjusted each orbit to point towards the sun. The IBEThe IBEX ENA detectors look normal to the spin axis, thus measuring 360° swaths of the sky each 15 s spacecraft spin. The full sky is mapped out every six months.
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The NASA Interstellar Boundary Explorer, IBEX, spacecraft was launched on October 19, 2008 to investigate the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. The IBEX payload include two Energetic Neutral Atom, ENA, instruments, IBEX-Lo and IBEX-Hi, which measure 10 eV to 2 keV neutrals and 300 eV to 6 Kev neutrals, respectively. The ENA measurements are indicative of charged particle populations near and beyond the termination shock of the heliosphere. The spacecraft was initially placed into a geocentric, eight day orbit with a perigee of 7000 km and an apogee of 37 Earth radii. This orbit exposed the spacecraft to a higher than desired level of radiation. So, the orbital perigee was raised in June 2011 to greater than 7 Re (out of the radiation belts) via the execution of three orbital maneuvers. The revised IBEX orbital period, equal to ~9.1 days, is in a three-to-one (3:1) resonance with that of the Moon around the Earth in order to minimize gravitational interactions. The spin axis of the IBEX spacecraft is adjusted each orbit to point towards the sun. The IBEThe IBEX ENA detectors look normal to the spin axis, thus measuring 360° swaths of the sky each 15 s spacecraft spin. The full sky is mapped out every six months.
| Role | Person | StartDate | StopDate | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | PrincipalInvestigator | spase://SMWG/Person/David.J.McComas | |||
| 2. | MetadataContact | spase://SMWG/Person/Lee.Frost.Bargatze |
Researchers Overview section of the overall set of IBEX pages hosted at Princeton University
Paper is by D.J. McComas and 28 co-authors.