A NASA mission to study the heliosphere has lifted off from Florida, carrying on board a scientific instrument designed in Poland.

On Wednesday at 12:32 p.m. local time (1:32 p.m. in Poland), a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) from the Kennedy Space Centre. The mission aims to explore two fundamental questions about the heliosphere: how energetic particles are accelerated and how the solar wind interacts with the local interstellar medium.

Equipped with ten scientific instruments, IMAP will provide a detailed picture of processes taking place in space from high-energy particles released by the Sun, through interplanetary magnetic fields, to the remnants of exploded stars.

Among these instruments is GLOWS (Global Solar Wind Structure), a photometer conceived and built at the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The device is designed to study the structure of the solar wind by observing faint ultraviolet emissions. Specifically, it will detect photons at the wavelength of 121.5 nanometres, known as Lyman-alpha. This band of far-ultraviolet light cannot reach the Earth’s surface because it is absorbed by the atmosphere, which makes spaceborne observation essential.

Source: PAP

Photo:  CBK PAN

Tomasz Modrzejewski