The first-stage booster B1096 previously launched KF-01 for Amazon's Project Kuiper and NASA's IMAP rideshare mission earlier this year.
This was the third flight for the first stage booster supporting the mission, which previously launched KF-01 and IMAP.
The first stage booster previously launched KF-01 and IMAP.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA's Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) probe.
The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division manages the IMAP and Carruthers Geocorona Observatory missions.
IMAP will sample and measure solar wind particles flowing outward from the Sun and high-energy particles flowing inward from the edges of the solar system.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built the IMAP spacecraft and will manage the mission.
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will study the Sun's high-energy particles and the heliosphere.
IMAP's data can provide insight into space weather and cosmic radiation.
IMAP is en route to a region in space called Lagrange Point 1, which is 1% closer to the Sun than Earth.
IMAP contains 10 scientific instruments with varying science goals.
The IMAP observatory plans to study the heliosphere, a large, magnetic bubble created by the sun that envelops the entire solar system.
The IMAP observatory will travel 108 days to reach the Lagrange point, which is approximately 1 million miles from Earth in the direction of the sun.
IMAP is led by David McComas of Princeton University, with a team of 27 partner institutions.
The IMAP observatory will be able to provide radiation warnings to astronauts in space.
The primary payload on the flight was NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, also known as IMAP.
The IMAP and Carruthers missions are managed by the Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying IMAP, the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA's SWFO-L1 spacecraft.
The IMAP observatory will use 10 science instruments to study and map the heliosphere.
The satellites launched include NASA's IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA's SWFO-L1.