Oct 15 2009
From The Space Library
NASA released the first comprehensive map of Earth’s solar system, including a map of its location in the Milky Way galaxy. NASA had produced the map using data collected over six months by two detectors on NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft. The map revealed the local interstellar medium, the region that separates the nearest reaches of the galaxy from the heliosphere. This region acts as a “protective bubble,” shielding Earth’s solar system from the most dangerous cosmic radiation traveling through space. According to IBEX Principal Investigator David J. McComas, of the Space Science and Engineering Division at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, the IBEX sky map marked the first time that scientists could leave the Sun’s atmosphere and begin to understand Earth’s place in the galaxy. The map also enabled astronomers to place in context the observations from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. Since their launch in 1977, the twin Voyager spacecraft had each traveled into the interstellar boundary. However, the IBEX data showed a ribbon of bright emissions that neither Voyager craft had detected. Launched in October 2008, NASA’s IBEX had a mission to map the heliosphere. The journal Science had published a series of papers outlining the results of the mission.
NASA, “NASA Spacecraft Provides First View of Our Place in the Galaxy,” news release 09-241, 15 October 2009, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/oct/HQ_09-241_IBEX.html (accessed 30 September 2011); Agence France-Presse, “NASA Probe Helps To Map Solar System,” 16 October 2009.
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