The Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate plans on implementing the next Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) mission. Following the recommendation of the 2013 National Research Council Decadal Strategy for Solar and Space Physics report, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society (www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13060), the fifth in a series of STP missions will be the "Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe" or IMAP. It will "target the understand[ing of] the outer heliosphere and its interaction with the interstellar medium."
 
IMAP science priorities are enumerated as follows:
 

1. 1: What is the spatio-temporal evolution of heliospheric boundary interactions?
2. 2: What is the nature of the heliopause and of the interaction of the solar and interstellar magnetic fields?
3. 3: What are the composition and physical properties of the surrounding interstellar medium?
4. 4: How are particles injected into acceleration regions and what mechanisms energize them throughout the heliosphere and heliosheath?

 

IMAP (STP-5): Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe News

• Selection Announced
   
  On 6/1/2018, NASA announced the selection for the Solar Terrestrial Probes #5 (STP-5) Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) solicitation (NASA Press Release 18-046).

 

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