IMAP Mission in the Runup to Launch

In this presentation we update the community on the current status of the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), the latest mission in the Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) program of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Heliophysics Division, which is slated to launch in September of 2025. With ten instruments, IMAP provides the complete set of observations to investigate two intimately coupled and vitally important research areas of Heliophysics: 1) the acceleration of energetic particles expelled from the Sun and 2) the interaction of the solar wind and energetic particles with the local interstellar medium. IMAP simultaneously examines particle injection and acceleration processes at 1 AU, while remotely imaging the global heliospheric interaction and its response to particle populations generated earlier through the aforementioned acceleration processes. That remote imaging is possible via the detection of Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENAs) that are being emitted when the charged particles expelled from the sun, and after they have been accelerated, interact with interstellar neutrals when they reach the heliospheric boundary. In addition to in-situ acceleration and remote ENA observations, IMAP instruments directly sample both interstellar neutral atoms and interstellar dust drifting into the heliosphere; interstellar pickup ions; solar wind ions, electrons, and magnetic field; and the Sun’s three-dimensional hydrogen “helioglow.” In addition to periodically downlinking the full science data, a subset of real time space weather data is continuously broadcast back to Earth from L1. For more information about IMAP and the great contributions from all of our 25 institutions, see https://imap.princeton.edu/. Please also Follow, Like, and Share us on Facebook.com/IMAPMission and Instagram@IMAPSpaceMission.