IBEX—Interstellar Boundary Explorer

By David John McComas, F. Allegrini, P. Bochsler, M. Bzowski, M. R. Collier, H. Fahr, H. Fichtner, P. Frisch, H. Funsten, S. Fuselier and 19 more. 2009

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is a small explorer mission that launched on 19 October 2008 with the sole, focused science objective to discover the global interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. IBEX is designed to achieve this objective by answering four fundamental science questions: (1) What is the global strength and structure of the termination shock, (2) How are energetic protons accelerated at the termination shock, (3) What are the global properties of the solar wind flow beyond the termination shock and in the heliotail, and (4) How does the interstellar flow interact with the heliosphere beyond the heliopause? The answers to these questions rely on energy-resolved images of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), which originate beyond the termination shock, in the inner heliosheath. To make these exploratory ENA observations IBEX carries two ultra-high sensitivity ENA cameras on a simple spinning spacecraft. IBEX’s very high apogee Earth orbit was achieved using a new and significantly enhanced method for launching small satellites; this orbit allows viewing of the outer heliosphere from beyond the Earth’s relatively bright magnetospheric ENA emissions. The combination of full-sky imaging and energy spectral measurements of ENAs over the range from ∼10 eV to 6 keV provides the critical information to allow us to achieve our science objective and understand this global interaction for the first time. The IBEX mission was developed to provide the first global views of the Sun’s interstellar boundaries, unveiling the physics of the heliosphere’s interstellar interaction, providing a deeper understanding of the heliosphere and thereby astrospheres throughout the galaxy, and creating the opportunity to make even greater unanticipated discoveries.

Subfields: Aerospace Engineering, Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1a182e5e4448038a603c5f5fa645858355d43669

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

Citations in the corpus

Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP): A New NASA Mission (2018, methodology): “McComas et al. (2009b) 2.”
INTERSTELLAR GAS FLOW PARAMETERS DERIVED FROM INTERSTELLAR BOUNDARY EXPLORER-Lo OBSERVATIONS IN 2009 AND 2010: ANALYTICAL ANALYSIS (2012, background): “With its unprecedented capability to image neutral atom distributions, the IBEX (McComas et al. 2009a, 2009b; see also other references in the IBEX special issue of Space Science Reviews) is now providing a new look at the interstellar gas flow through the inner heliosphere (Möbius et al. 2009b).”
The Heliospheric Magnetic Field (2013, methodology): “The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission (McComas et al., 2009) is currently mapping the structure of the heliopause through ENA imaging, as discussed in Section 2.6.”
NEUTRAL INTERSTELLAR HELIUM PARAMETERS BASED ON IBEX-Lo OBSERVATIONS AND TEST PARTICLE CALCULATIONS (2012, background): “The IBEX mission was launched in 2008 to discover the global interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium (ISM; McComas et al. 2009a, 2009b).”
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer High Energy (IBEX-Hi) Neutral Atom Imager (2009, methodology): “Because of the anticipated tenuous signal at 1 AU of ENAs from the interaction region between the heliosphere and the LISM, the IBEX-Hi sensor design has been driven by maximizing sensitivity and minimizing background and noise, resulting in the most sensitive ENA sensor ever flown over its energy r”
The Interstellar Medium Surrounding the Sun (2011, background): “Over the past two years, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is providing a new level of information about interactions between the ISM and the heliosphere and the interstellar magnetic field, through measurements of the energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) and in situ detections of interstellar hel”
SEPARATION OF THE INTERSTELLAR BOUNDARY EXPLORER RIBBON FROM GLOBALLY DISTRIBUTED ENERGETIC NEUTRAL ATOM FLUX (2011, methodology): “McComas et al. (2009b) and Funsten et al. (2009a) found that the slopes in the first IBEX maps were ordered by latitude.”