New Mexico Consortium Scientists Contribute to NASA’s IMAP Mission

New Mexico Consortium Scientists Contribute to NASA’s IMAP Mission

NASA has successfully launched the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), a spacecraft that will chart the boundaries of the heliosphere—the giant bubble created by solar wind that surrounds our solar system—and study how it interacts with the galaxy beyond. IMAP will travel about one million miles toward the sun, where it will continuously measure solar wind and remotely observe how it collides with interstellar space.

The mission carries ten scientific instruments, including IMAP-Hi, developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This instrument will detect and map invisible particles called energetic neutral atoms, giving scientists an unprecedented view of the far edges of the heliosphere.

Two scientists affiliated with the New Mexico Consortium (NMC) are playing important roles in this mission. Dan Reisenfeld, a Los Alamos space scientist with a joint appointment at NMC, serves as deputy instrument lead for IMAP-Hi. Paul Janzen, an NMC researcher, was in charge of the instrument calibration prior to delivery of IMAP-Hi to the spacecraft and will serve as the instrument operations lead during the mission. Together, they are helping to reveal how the heliosphere protects Earth and astronauts from harmful cosmic radiation, while also uncovering new clues about the origins of our solar system.

This mission builds on discoveries made by NASA’s IBEX spacecraft over the past 17 years, but IMAP will deliver far more detail—allowing researchers to answer fundamental questions about our place in the galaxy and the forces that shape life on Earth.

Learn more about this project at nasa.gov/imap.

Top photo: “Dan Reisenfeld and family at the launch viewing site for IMAP at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seen behind them is the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) that was used to attach the Space Shuttle to its booster rockets before launch and currently houses the Artemis rocket which will take astronauts back to the Moon in February 2026.”