Overview of the Instellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) Mission

This talk provides an overview of the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission and what we hope and expect to learn from it. IMAP is currently in Phase B and is slated to launch in the fall of 2024. IMAP simultaneously investigates two of the most important, and intimately coupled, research areas in Heliophysics today: 1) the acceleration of energetic particles and 2) the interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium. IMAP’s ten instruments provide a complete set of observations to simultaneously examine the particle injection and acceleration processes at 1 AU while remotely dissecting the global heliospheric interaction and its response to particle populations generated through these processes. For more information about IMAP, see: McComas, D.J., et al., Interstellar mapping and acceleration Probe (IMAP): A New NASA Mission, Space Science Review, 214:116, doi:10.1007/s11214-018-0550-1, 2018.

Open Access: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11214-018-0550-1