IMAP probe passed final test

NASA's IMAP probe, whose construction is being assisted by the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences, passed its Operational Readiness Review with flying colors. The probe will study the heliosphere and space, and its interactions with interstellar space, and the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences has prepared one of the scientific instruments.

The team of scientists and engineers testing IMAP (The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) has demonstrated full readiness for launch, the implementation phase, and the mission's science operations.

"At the conclusion of the review, we received full approval. The review committee's comments emphasized that this was one of the cleanest ORRs they had participated in and expressed great appreciation for our entire team," said Kieran Hagerty, IMAP's project manager.

The probe will study and map the boundaries of the heliosphere—the "bubble" created by the solar wind that surrounds the entire Solar System. Among other things, it will investigate how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic environment.

According to experts from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the probe carries ten instruments that will study various phenomena – from high-energy particles from the Sun, through magnetic fields in interplanetary space, to the remnants of exploding stars in interstellar space.

The Polish team has developed one of the probe's instruments and experiments: GLOWS (GLObal solar Wind Structure), a photometer that will analyze the solar wind's impact on hydrogen gas in the heliosphere.

In the history of all NASA missions, it is the only instrument entirely designed and built at the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

“The GLOWS team has spent the last few months working on the final version of the flight software and scripts for controlling the device after launch,” says Prof. Maciej Bzowski, Ph.D., head of the GLOWS team, quoted in a press release on the Polish Academy of Sciences website.

The expert adds that his team tested GLOWS in cooperation with American partners as part of tests of the entire space observatory.

"We checked operational procedures, responses to abnormal situations, and so on. Placing the GLOWS qualification unit in the vacuum chamber at the CBK PAN, we illuminated it with Lyman-alpha radiation—testing the instrument in conditions as close to those in space as possible. This way, we tested the so-called commissioning procedures, i.e., the process of first powering up the instrument after launch. As strange as it may sound, we also tested future voltage and sensitivity tests, as well as a program of regular GLOWS sensitivity tests, which are to be performed once a month during the device's operation," explains Prof. Bzowski.

"We're pleased that the last inspection went so well, because it means everything should go smoothly after launch. The most exciting part of the mission is ahead of us: the launch and commissioning of the spacecraft and its individual instruments. We have until the end of January for commissioning, meaning commissioning and checking all the subsystems and scientific instruments, as well as finding the optimal settings for their operation. This will happen during our arrival at the L1 Lagrange point. Typically, the data collected during this period isn't used for scientific analysis, but we will, of course, be watching it very closely. It's getting increasingly difficult to wait for the first light seen by GLOWS in space," he adds.

The launch is scheduled for the end of September this year.

Marek Matacz (PAP)

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