Unraveling an Outer System ‘Knot’

IBEX, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, was never designed to visit the regions it studies. Indeed, the spacecraft, launched in October of 2008, is in Earth orbit and a highly elliptical one at that, with an apogee of 322,000 kilometers and a perigee of 16,000 kilometers. But from that vantage IBEX is able to study and map the boundary between the heliosphere and true interstellar space. It does this by detecting energetic neutral atoms of hydrogen (ENAs) produced at the heliosheath, helping us understand the effects of the solar wind as it collides with interstellar materials. The encounter between solar wind and the interstellar medium causes ENAs to be scattered in all directions from the heliosheath -- those that pass near the Earth are what IBEX detects, and the spacecraft scans overlapping strips of sky to build up a 360-degree map. It was last October, a year after launch, that we learned from the first IBEX map that the interstellar boundary was a more lively place than...

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A Quick Take on IAC’s Final Day

by Kelvin Long No one gets more done on a Blackberry than Kelvin Long, one of the powerhouses behind Project Icarus. Kelvin has been in Prague for the International Astronautical Congress, and just sent along a wrap-up of his final day at the conference, one he completed while on the way to the airport. Here's a quick and mobile take on the last day of IAC 2010 as seen by this physicist and author. I'm sitting listening to one of my last talks before I catch my flight. It's on the JEO or Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission [part of the proposed Europa Jupiter System Mission (EJSM)]. The spacecraft will have around twelve instruments on board with the focus on the emergence of habitable worlds. It will be accompanied by the JGO spacecraft or Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter. It's going to be a great mission and pity Arthur C. Clarke isn't around to see it. Launch date 2020 and ends around 2029. Apparently the radiation design dose will be 2.9 Mega rads. An Io gravity assist will be used for...

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Charter

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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