IBEX Mission Thread.. exploring the heliosphere.

[MeteorWayne]

<span class="bold">NASA to Discuss Mission to Study Sun's Weakening Protective Bubble </span>GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA will hold a media teleconference on Friday, Oct. 17, at 1 p.m. EDT, to preview the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission. The spacecraft may confirm if the sun's protective bubble surrounding our solar system, called the heliosphere, is about to shrink and weaken. IBEX also will be the first spacecraft to image and map the dynamic interactions taking place where the hot solar wind slams into the cold expanse of space. <br /><br />The heliosphere acts as a shield for our solar system, warding off most of the galactic cosmic rays. Recent data indicate the solar wind's global pressure is the lowest seen since the beginning of the space age. <br /><br />IBEX is set to launch Oct. 19 from the Kwajalein Atoll, a part of the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. <br /><br />Panelists will be: <br />- David McComas, IBEX principal investigator at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio <br />- Nathan Schwadron, co-investigator and IBEX Science Operations Center lead at Boston University <br />- Stephen Fuselier, co-investigator and IBEX-Lo Sensor lead at Lockheed-Martin Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. <br />- Eric Christian, program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington&nbsp;<br /><br />Supporting information for the briefing will be available at the start of the teleconference on the Web at: <br /><br /><p align="center">http://www.nasa.gov/ibex </p>Hopefully this teleconference will work better than the "Hubble switch to side B" one....<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[nimbus]

There won't be any pictures for this one, but it's a mission I've been impatient to see the results of since I first heard of it a few years ago. &nbsp;Something about mapping the frontier between us and interstellar space is just really realy cool <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[Huntster]

<p>As an interesting aside, IBEX has its own Twitter, similar in form to Phoenix and the MERs and located at http://twitter.com/IBEX_NASA.</p><p>I was surprised by the sheer number of NASA-operated Twitters, and spent a while today tracking down all I could find. Everything from JPL and LSP to Hubble and Cassini to the individual shuttles and current shuttle missions, with everything in-between. My list is located at http://twitter.com/huntster1701/friends, plus some additional space-related news feeds. For the ones that maintain moderate-to-high levels of activity, it is fascinating stuff. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[MeteorWayne]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>As an interesting aside, IBEX has its own Twitter, similar in form to Phoenix and the MERs and located at http://twitter.com/IBEX_NASA.I was surprised by the sheer number of NASA-operated Twitters, and spent a while today tracking down all I could find. Everything from JPL and LSP to Hubble and Cassini to the individual shuttles and current shuttle missions, with everything in-between. My list is located at http://twitter.com/huntster1701/friends, plus some additional space-related news feeds. For the ones that maintain moderate-to-high levels of activity, it is fascinating stuff. <br />Posted by Huntster</DIV><br /><br />A good telcon until the end. </p><p>Unfortunately, NASA was STUPID enough to give out the password for media on a publically available website with no vetting required, so there was one obsecene question, and one question about the probe representing an interstellar federation or something like that.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>And yet they gave me a hard time about asking real qustions at the Phoenix telecons. My accreditation wasn't good enough, and now they give out the passwords on a public site. Sheesh....</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>They deserved what they got.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>

 

[3488]

<p><font size="5">IBEX launched successfully.</font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>High altitude ferry flight & Pegasus launch by the L 1011 Tristar was flawless.&nbsp;</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Andrew Brown.&nbsp;</strong></font></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[Astro_Robert]

IBEX Update

The IBEX team has released new results. Apparently they were published in the Jan-10 issue of Astrophysical Journal, although there is a layman's article here:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Magne ... n_999.html

The article describes a new solar system model that closely reproduces the bright band seen in the IBEX measurements by allowing the Termination Shock to reflect some solar particles back at us like a mirror.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Re: IBEX Update

I will merge this into the existing IBEX thread when I have time to find it.

 

[nimbus]

Re: IBEX Update

Here it is Wayne:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=879

 

[MeteorWayne]

Thanx, running on a temp computer, appreciate the help. MW

 

[MeteorWayne]

SDC article today:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/s ... 00118.html

 

[MeteorWayne]

Imagine floating 35,000 miles above the sunny side of Earth. Our home planet gleams below, a majestic whorl of color and texture. All seems calm around you. With no satellites or space debris to dodge, you can just relax and enjoy the black emptiness of space.

But looks can be deceiving.

In reality, you've unknowingly jumped into an invisible mosh pit of electromagnetic mayhem — the place in space where a supersonic "wind" of charged particles from the Sun crashes head-on into the protective magnetic bubble that surrounds our planet. Traveling at a million miles per hour, the solar wind's protons and electrons sense Earth's magnetosphere too late to flow smoothly around it. Instead, they're shocked, heated, and slowed almost to a stop as they pile up along its outer boundary, the magnetopause, before getting diverted sideways.

Space physicists have had a general sense of these dynamic goings-on for decades. But it wasn't until the advent of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer or IBEX, a NASA spacecraft launched in October 2008, that they've been able to see what the human eye cannot: the first-ever images of this electromagnetic crash scene. They can now witness how some of the solar wind's charged particles are being neutralized by gas escaping from Earth's atmosphere.

A New Way to See Atoms

IBEX wasn't designed to keep tabs on Earth's magnetosphere. Instead, its job is to map interactions occurring far beyond the planets, 8 to 10 billion miles away, where the Sun's own magnetic bubble, the heliosphere, meets interstellar space.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ibex/em-crash.html

 

[MeteorWayne]

WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT, on Wednesday, Sept. 29, to discuss new information about the boundary of our solar system obtained from the agency's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft.

The briefing participants are:
- Arik Posner, IBEX program scientist, Heliophysics Division, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Nathan Schwadron, IBEX science operations lead and associate professor at the University of New Hampshire in Durham
- David McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio
- Merav Opher, associate professor, George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

At the beginning of the briefing, related images will be available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ibex

 

[MeteorWayne]

Starts in 15 minutes...

 

[MeteorWayne]

Postponed till tomorrow at noon EDT

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.physorg.com : Knot in the ribbon at the edge of the solar system 'unties'

September 30, 2010

The unusual "knot" in the bright, narrow ribbon of neutral atoms emanating in from the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space appears to have "untied," according to a paper published online in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

Researchers believe the ribbon, first revealed in maps produced by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, forms in response to interactions between interstellar space and the heliosphere, the protective bubble in which the Earth and other planets reside. Sensitive neutral atom detectors aboard IBEX produce global maps of this region every six months.

...

While the second map, released publicly with the just-published paper, shows the large-scale structure of the ribbon to be generally stable within the six-month period, changes are also apparent. The polar regions of the ribbon display lower emissions and the knot diminishes by as much as a third and appears to "untie" as it spreads out to both lower and higher latitudes.

"What we're seeing is the knot pull apart as it spreads across a region of the ribbon," says Dr. David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and an assistant vice president at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "To this day the science team can't agree on exactly what causes the knot or the ribbon, but by comparing different sky maps we find the surprising result that the region is changing over relatively short time periods. Now we have to figure out why."

...


www.swri.org : News Release: Knot in the ribbon at the edge of the solar system "unties"

The IBEX science team compares the first and second maps to reveal whether there are time variations in the ribbon or the more distributed emissions around the ribbon. This animation fades between the first and second IBEX maps. We see that the first and second maps are relatively similar; however, there are significant time variations as well. These time variations are forcing scientists to try to understand how the heliosphere can be changing so rapidly.
Download Movie

Credit: IBEX Science Team/Goddard Space Flight Center

One of the clear features visible in the IBEX maps is an apparent knot in the ribbon. Scientists were anxious to see how this structure would change with time. The second map showed that the knot in the ribbon somehow spread out. It is as if the knot in the ribbon was literally untangled over only six months. This visualization shows a close-up of the ribbon (green and red) superimposed on the stars and constellations in the nighttime sky. The animation begins by looking toward the nose of the heliosphere and then pans up and left to reveal the knot. The twisted structure superimposed on the map is an artist's conception of the tangled up ribbon. The animation then shows this structure untangling as we fade into the second map of the heliosphere.
Download Movie

Credit: IBEX Science Team/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio/ESA

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtpR8TmZGW4[/youtube]

NASAtelevision | September 30, 2010

For the first time, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft reveals changing conditions at the edge of our solar system. The heliosphere changes size through the solar cycle, which affects the number of cosmic rays that reach Earth. Scientists now have a better understanding of the dynamic nature of our home in the galaxy.