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NASA Awards IMAP Launch Services Contract To SpaceX Ahead Of 2024 Launch

In a contract release document on 25th September 2020, NASA revealed that it has awarded the launch services contract of its Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) to Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX.

 

IMAP is a research device that will help researchers understand the boundary of the heliosphere better; the heliosphere is the magnetic barrier surrounding the solar system. IMAP will collect neutral particles that make it through the heliosphere and attempt to map them.

 

The heliosphere has been of interest to researchers for long because there is a constant flow of particles from the Sun in it and they collide with particles from other stars.

 

NASA says the cost of launching the IMAP and its secondary payloads is about $109.4 million. The cost also includes launch services and other costs that relates to the mission.

 

NASA will not just launch only the IMAP; it will also launch its Lunar Trailblazer vehicle. Additionally, it will launch two undisclosed NASA heliophysics mission vehicles and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1).

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SpaceX will launch NASA IMAP on a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket. The launch should happen in October 2024 from SpaceX’s Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

 

Princeton University in New Jersey and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland will lead the mission. Meanwhile, the agency’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service.

 

The overall management, system engineering, integration, and testing and mission operations falls to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. SpaceX confirmed the news via its Twitter page.

 

It also further revealed:

 

 

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Onwuasoanya Obinna

A reader of books and stringer of words. Passionate about Science and Tech. When not writing or reading he is surfing the web and Tweeting.

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