NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft
was launched 19-Oct-2008 to discover the interaction between the solar wind
and the interstellar medium. Its two energetic neutral atom (ENA)
instruments measure 10 eV - 6 keV ENA's indicative of charged particle
populations near and beyond the heliosphere's termination shock. The
spacecraft is in a geocentric, 8-day orbit between 7000 km and 37 Re.
Its spin axis is adjusted each orbit to point towards the sun. Its two ENA
detectors look normal to the spin axis, thus measuring 360 deg swaths of
the sky each 15-sec spacecraft spin. The full sky is measured every
6 months.
Version:2.2.0
NASA's IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer) spacecraft
was launched 19-Oct-2008 to discover the interaction between the solar wind
and the interstellar medium. Its two energetic neutral atom (ENA)
instruments measure 10 eV - 6 keV ENA's indicative of charged particle
populations near and beyond the heliosphere's termination shock. The
spacecraft is in a geocentric, 8-day orbit between 7000 km and 37 Re.
Its spin axis is adjusted each orbit to point towards the sun. Its two ENA
detectors look normal to the spin axis, thus measuring 360 deg swaths of
the sky each 15-sec spacecraft spin. The full sky is measured every
6 months.
| Role | Person | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | PrincipalInvestigator | spase://SMWG/Person/David.J.McComas |
Section of overall IBEX pages at SWRI for researchers,
with links to published descriptive and science-results papers
Paper is by D.J. McComas and 28 co-authors.