Interstellar Boundary Explorer
 |
|
| Names | Explorer 91 SMEX-10 |
|---|---|
| Mission type | Astronomy |
| Operator | NASA |
| COSPAR ID | 2008-051A |
| SATCAT no. | 33401 |
| Website | http://www.ibex.swri.edu/ |
| Mission duration | Planned: 2 years Elapsed: 8 years, 5 months and 24 days |
| Spacecraft properties | |
| Bus | MicroStar-1 |
| Manufacturer | Orbital Sciences |
| Launch mass | 107 kg (236 lb) |
| Dry mass | 80 kg (176 lb) |
| Payload mass | 26 kg (57 lb) |
| Dimensions | 95 × 58 cm (37 × 23 in) |
| Power | 66 W (116 W max) |
| Start of mission | |
| Launch date | October 19, 2008, 17:47:23 UTC |
| Rocket | Pegasus XL |
| Launch site | Stargazer, Bucholz Airfield |
| Contractor | Orbital Sciences |
| Entered service | January 2009 |
| Orbital parameters | |
| Reference system | Geocentric |
| Regime | High Earth |
| Semi-major axis | 178,975.8 km (111,210.4 mi) |
| Eccentricity | 0.48238 |
| Perigee | 86,263.2 km (53,601.5 mi) |
| Apogee | 258,932.2 km (160,893.0 mi) |
| Inclination | 45.8582° |
| Period | 12,558.95 min |
| RAAN | 20.6126° |
| Argument of perigee | 175.652° |
| Mean anomaly | 357.024° |
| Mean motion | 0.114634 rev/day |
| Epoch | August 16, 2016, 12:23:45 UTC |
| Revolution no. | 330 |
| Instruments | |
| IBEX-Lo, IBEX-Hi | |
|
|
|
Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is a NASA satellite that is making a map of the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space. The mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and was launched with a Pegasus-XL rocket on October 19, 2008.
The design and operation of the mission is being led by the Southwest Research Institute, with the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center serving as co-investigator institutions responsible for the IBEX-Hi and IBEX-Lo sensors respectively. The Orbital Sciences Corporation manufactured the spacecraft bus and was the location for spacecraft environmental testing. The nominal mission baseline duration was two years to observe the entire Solar System boundary. This was completed by 2011 and its mission was extended to 2013 to continue observations.
IBEX is in a Sun-oriented spin-stabilized orbit around the Earth. In June 2011, IBEX was shifted to a new more efficient orbit. It does not come as close to the Moon in the new orbit, and expends less fuel to maintain its position.
The heliospheric boundary of the Solar System is being imaged by measuring the location and magnitude of charge-exchange collisions occurring in all directions. This will ultimately yield a map of the termination shock of the solar wind. The satellite's payload consists of two energetic neutral atom (ENA) imagers, IBEX-Hi and IBEX-Lo. Each of these sensors consists of a collimator that limits their fields-of-view, a conversion surface to convert neutral hydrogen and oxygen into ions, an electrostatic analyzer (ESA) to suppress ultraviolet light and to select ions of a specific energy range, and a detector to count particles and identify the type of each ion. The IBEX-Hi instrument is recording particle counts in a higher energy band than the IBEX-Lo does. The scientific payload also includes a Combined Electronics Unit (CEU) that controls the voltages on the collimator and the ESA, and it reads and records data from the particle detectors of each sensor.
...
Wikipedia