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SpaceX simply despatched three house climate probes to the ultimate frontier.
A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida right this moment (Sept. 24) at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), carrying NASA’s IMAP mission and and two different spacecraft.
Each probe has its personal targets, however all three will work towards the identical bigger purpose: assist scientists higher perceive space weather and its effects on Earth.
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They’re also all headed to the same place — the sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1, a gravitationally stable spot about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth, in the direction of our star.
IMAP (short for “Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe”) is the primary payload on today’s flight. The roughly $600 million spacecraft carries 10 different science instruments, which it will use to monitor solar activity as well as study interstellar dust and the solar wind, the stream of charged particles flowing continuously from our sun.
The mission’s data will also help scientists map the outer boundary of the heliosphere, the vast bubble around our solar system that’s dominated by the sun’s solar wind and magnetic field.
IMAP will also provide radiation warnings for astronauts — for example, those with NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon over the next decade or so.
“Radiation exposure is a real threat to our astronauts traveling to the moon and beyond,” Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a news conference on Sunday (Sept. 21).
“Humanity has only ever existed inside our protective magnetosphere, and as we travel beyond that protective shield, whether it be to the moon or to Mars, the actionable information from missions like IMAP will keep our astronauts safe,” she added.
The other two spacecraft that went up today are NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (CGO) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.
CGO will investigate the exosphere, the wispy outermost reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. The small satellite “will image the faint glow of ultraviolet light from this region, called the geocorona, to better understand how space weather impacts our planet,” NASA officials said in a mission description. “The Carruthers mission continues the legacy of the Apollo era, expanding on measurements first taken during Apollo 16.”
SWFO-L1 will observe photo voltaic storms, offering an early warning system for house climate, which may pose a risk to satellites, astronauts in orbit and a few infrastructure on the bottom, akin to energy grids.
All went based on plan on right this moment’s launch. The Falcon 9’s higher stage deployed IMAP into an interplanetary switch orbit about 84 minutes after launch. SWFO-L1 and CGO adopted go well with about 6.5 minutes and 13 minutes after that, respectively.
And the rocket’s first stage got here again to Earth on schedule, touchdown rather less than 9 minutes after liftoff on the SpaceX droneship “Just Read the Instructions,” which was stationed within the Atlantic Ocean. It was the second flight for this specific booster, based on a SpaceX mission description.
Today’s launch was the one hundred and twentieth Falcon 9 flight of 2025 already. Most of those missions — greater than 70% of them — have been devoted to constructing out SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet constellation in low Earth orbit.
Editor’s be aware: This story was up to date at 10:55 a.m. ET on Sept. 24 with information of profitable spacecraft deployment.
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