Star Trekking

NASA's mission to map the skies

Ever looked towards the skies on a clear, starry night and wondered what the solar system actually looks like? A roaring mass of black holes and cosmic explosions perhaps, or just a whole bunch of twinkly lights and old props from a Milky Way magic stars advert?

Wonder no more, as NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive ‘sky map’ of our solar system. Launched just under a year ago, IBEX was designed to map the heliosphere – a region of space that shields and protects our solar system from dangerous cosmic radiation; like a kind of gigantic protective bubble, if you will. Now the first data from that expedition has arrived.

David J. McComas, IBEX principal investigator and assistant vice president of the Space Science and Engineering Division, spoke of the importance of the findings, “For the first time, we’re sticking our heads out of the sun’s atmosphere and beginning to really understand our place in the galaxy.”

Detectors on the spacecraft measured and counted particles blown through the heliosphere by solar winds, and assembled the data into a series of images of the solar system. However, the images did not conform to scientific expectations as a mysterious ribbon – found to be made of hydrogen – was discovered arching around the solar system; a feature that has remained undetected until now.

The IBEX sky maps have shed a brighter light onto previous data gathered by the NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft, which omitted to detect the uneven flow of particles in the solar system. As Eric Christian, the IBEX deputy mission scientist explained, “[The voyager’s are] missing the most exciting region. It’s like having two weather stations that miss the big storm that runs between them.”

The IBEX spacecraft continues to collect data, with images updated every six months. However, the next picture of the ‘mystery stripe’ may be radically different from the previous one, and astrophysicists all across the board can only wait in anticipation for the next instalment of this solar system saga.