Three spacecraft will launch to study the Sun. Three solar research missions are scheduled to launch together on the same Falcon 9 this week: NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1, the agency’s first satellite designed specifically for and dedicated to continuous, operational space weather observation). All three are headed together to Earth-Sun Lagrange Point L1, around 1.5 million kilometers Sun-ward. There, the trio of heliophysics missions will study space weather, the solar wind, and the space environment, from the Sun all the way to the edge of our solar system. IMAP looks outward, studying and mapping the boundary of the heliosphere, where the solar wind interacts with the local interstellar medium, and image the poorly understood IBEX ribbon at higher resolution. The heliosphere acts as a kind of shield, enveloping our solar system and protecting it from some cosmic rays. IMAP, pointing outward and therefore back toward home, will also observe the space environment near Earth, helping to improve space weather prediction. Carruthers Geocorona Observatory flies with IMAP as a rideshare and will study Earth’s exosphere by imaging the geocorona, a poorly understood region of our outer atmosphere that scatters UV wavelengths and interacts with the solar wind. NOAA’s SWFO-L1, looking inward, will provide real-time solar corona, solar wind, and interplanetary magnetic field monitoring to provide an early-warning system for potentially harmful space weather events. |
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 | The IBEX Ribbon, one of IMAP’s imaging objectives, is an unexpected structure of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), first discovered by NASA’s IBEX mission in 2009. ENAs form when charged solar wind particles undergo charge exchange with neutral atoms, becoming electrically neutral and able to travel in straight paths. |
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Rocket Lab could head to Mars next week. New Glenn’s second launch is currently scheduled NET September 29th. Onboard will be NASA’s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) duo, bumped from their original October 2024 launch due to New Glenn’s readiness at the time. The pair will head to Mars to study the planet’s magnetosphere and how the solar wind interacts with the Martian atmosphere (or, what’s left of it, anyway). ESCAPADE was built by Rocket Lab, which is also interested in developing a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter for NASA. (Blue Origin itself has similar ambitions and has also proposed a conceptual Mars Telecommunications Orbiter.) Also on board New Glenn’s second launch will be a secondary payload from Viasat, a payload that will demonstrate the company’s space-based launch comms solution, a potential commercial replacement for NASA’s venerable TDRS system. The mission will once again attempt return and landing of New Glenn’s 57.5-meter-tall first stage on a drone ship down range from the launch site. |
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 | ESCAPADE under development at Rocket Lab’s Spacecraft Production Complex in Long Beach. Image Credit: Rocket Lab |
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| News in brief. The VIPER mission (c.f. Issue 279) might be revived after NASA awarded Blue Origin a conditional $190M contract to deliver the rover to the Lunar South Pole via their MK1 robotic lander, contingent on the lander’s upcoming first flight and further demonstration of the lander’s ability to deploy the 450 kg rover (see Jatan’s latest Moon Monday for more details) ● US Space Command coordinated a peaceful rendezvous demonstration with the UK military, maneuvering an unnamed US spacecraft to inspect the UK’s Skynet 5A military communications satellite in GEO ● Dr. Riccardo Pozzobon, a research scientist and instructor for ESA’s Pangaea lunar analog astronaut training, sadly passed away during a recent excursion in Alaska ● Hubble Network closed a $70M Series B to advance their Bluetooth tracking satellite constellation ● Russia’s Bion-M No. 2 spacecraft re-entered after a month in space spent studying radiation’s effects on biological specimens such as mice and fruit flies ● iSpace, a Beijing-based commercial launch startup, raised $98M to continue developing their reusable medium-lift Hyperbola-3 launcher ● NYC-based Icarus Robotics raised $6.1M in seed funding to build AI-controlled robots for commercial space stations ● GHGSat secured $34M in additional funding to expand their greenhouse gas monitoring constellation ● Blue Origin launched its 35th New Shepard flight, carrying 40 payloads instead of a crew, and is retiring the capsule flown on this flight after its eight year lifetime ● Despite being delayed by a thruster glitch during orbit-raising maneuvers, Cygnus arrived at the ISS to deliver a record-setting 4,911 kg of supplies. |
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 | NG-23, the first Cygnus XL spacecraft to arrive at the ISS, pictured from the ISS, as it is maneuvered into its berth by the station’s robotic arm. |
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Etc.- Lots of views of our Sun and space weather data on a dashboard. Also, NASA research suggests that the Sun reversed a decades-long decline in activity starting in 2008, with activity now increasing. This trend shift occurs alongside its usual 11-year cycle. Also also, NOAA has a new space weather portal.
- NASA’s excellent Significant Incidents & Close Calls in Human Spaceflight and Significant Incidents & Close Calls in Human Spaceflight: EVA Operations visualizations.
- The Spirograph Nebula, a planetary nebula resulting from a red giant star shedding material as it becomes a white dwarf, has been imaged spectrographically since the technique was developed in the 1890s. Using data recorded over the intervening 130 years, researchers showed that the star’s temperature has increased by 3,000 °C, which is still slower than stellar evolution models would predict (paper). The earliest measurement was naked-eye and recorded observing strong green colors from the then-believed (and since-disproven) element nebulium, now known to be emitted by doubly ionized oxygen.
- Ethan Siegel on whether dark energy is evolving with time (he’s skeptical) and if early, supermassive stars could explain a lot of the cosmological inconsistencies we’ve been seeing (he’s intrigued).
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A high-resolution image of an X-class solar flare taken by the Inouye Solar Telescope on August 8, 2024, the first X-class flare observed by this powerful new telescope. (It may be our most powerful solar telescope, but that image is still 4 Earth diameters to a side!) Dark coronal loops, following the Sun’s magnetic field lines, average 48 km in width in the image and align with theoretical predictions. They might be the fundamental structures of solar flares. Credit: NSF/NSO/AURA |  |
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