Learning Section

IBEX Questions and Answers
IBEX Q & A

IBEX will explore the boundaries of our solar system. Learn more about the mission through questions and answers.

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Did You Know...

IBEX: Did you know...
About Our Solar System's Boundaries

See if you can test your knowledge about this subject or learn more by reading about it.

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Artist concept of space weather showing an active Sun with flares and a CME in the upper right, the Earth in the lower right with types of technology affected by space weather to the lower left; satellites, airplanes, the ISS and ground-based electrical lines.
Heliophysics

Studying the Sun-Earth connection.

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Latest News

An artist’s rendition of the IBEX in space.

IBEX Reveals Missing Boundary At Solar System Edge

Scientists compile data from IBEX, Voyager, and computer models to show that the heliosphere just isn't moving fast enough to create a bow shock.

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Artist concept of the elliptical orbit of the TWINS spacecrafts.

Teamwork: IBEX and TWINS Observe a Solar Storm

On April 5, 2010, the sun spewed a two million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles toward Earth; two NASA Heliophysics System Observatory ...

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0xygen to Neon comparison graphs superimposed on the latest IBEX full sky map.

The Interstellar Material Beyond our Solar System

It's an alien environment out there: the material in the galactic wind doesn't look like the same stuff our solar system is made of.

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Mission Statement

    Artist's concept of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer > View larger
    Roughly the size of a card table, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer is the latest in NASA’s series of low-cost, rapidly developed Small Explorers spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab     The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission science objective is to discover the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system.











Mission News

  • The white lines show a model of where magnetic field lines are expected in Earth's magnetic atmosphere. The bright red colors show the densest part of the plasma sheet as imaged by IBEX.

    Catching Space Weather in the Act

    Special cameras aboard the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft have snapped the first images of space weather as it happens.

  • First-ever view of the magnetospheric plasma sheet in profile, as seen by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer from outside the magnetosphere.

    IBEX Provides First-ever Images of Plasma Sheet  →

    NASA's IBEX spacecraft, designed to image the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, captured images of magnetospheric structures and a dynamic event occurring in the magnetosphere as the spacecraft observed from near lunar distance.

  • Artist's concept of the Interstellar Boundary Explorer

    IBEX Finds Surprising Changes at Solar Boundary

    When Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) was launched on October 19, 2008, space physicists held their collective breath for never-before-seen views of a collision zone far beyond the planets. Now scientists have finished assembling a second complete sweep around the sky, and IBEX has again delivered an unexpected result: the map has changed significantly.

  • IBEX found that Energetic Neutral Atoms, or ENAs, are coming from a region just outside Earth's magnetopause where nearly stationary protons from the solar wind interact with the tenuous cloud of hydrogen atoms in Earth's exosphere.

    IBEX Spacecraft Finds Discoveries Close to Home

    It wasn’t until the IBEX mission that they’ve been able to see what the human eye cannot: the first-ever images of this electromagnetic crash scene.

  • Comparison images of IBEX data to a reflection model.

    Mystery of the Giant Ribbon, Solved?  →

    Last year, when NASA's IBEX spacecraft discovered a giant ribbon at the edge of the solar system, researchers were mystified. They called it a "shocking result" and puzzled over its origin. Now the mystery may have been solved.

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