Interstellar Probe: A Mission to the Heliospheric Boundary and Interstellar Medium to Understand our Home in the Galaxy

For the past 60, 000 years our Sun and its protective heliosphere have been plowing through the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), but is now in a historic transition region towards the G-cloud that could have dramatic consequences for the global heliospheric structure. An Interstellar Probe mission to the Very Local Interstellar Medium (VLISM) would bring new scientific discoveries of the mechanisms upholding our vast heliosphere and directly sample the Local Interstellar Clouds to allow us, not only to understand the current dynamics and shielding, but also how the heliosphere responded in the past and how it will respond in the new interstellar environment. An international team of scientists and experts have now completed a NASA-funded study led by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) to develop pragmatic example mission concepts for an Interstellar Probe with a nominal design lifetime of 50 years. The team has analyzed dozens of launch configurations and demonstrated that asymptotic speeds in excess of 7.5 Astronomical Units (AU) per year can be achieved using existing or near-term propulsion stages with a powered or passive Jupiter Gravity Assist (JGA). These speeds are more than twice that of the fastest escaping man-made spacecraft to date, which is Voyager 1 currently at 3.59 AU/year. An Interstellar Probe would therefore reach the Termination Shock (TS) in less than 12 years and cross the Heliopause into the VLISM after about 16 years from launch.

In this presentation we provide an overview of the study, the science mission concept, discuss the compelling discoveries that await, and the associated example science payload, measurements and operations ensuring a historic data return that would push the boundaries of space exploration by going where no one has gone before.