Spanish
Miami (USA).- NASA launched three missions into space this Wednesday that seek to map the heliosphere, the layer that surrounds and protects the solar system, to critically monitor space weather and to study how the Earth's upper atmosphere responds to the solar wind.
The three missions took off from Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket around 7:30 local time (11:30 GMT) and their destination is the first Lagrange point, a gravitationally stable place between the Sun and the Earth separated by more than 1.6 million kilometers from the blue planet.
Once there, after an estimated journey of 108 days, the missions will proceed to the study of the heliosphere, the solar wind and the exosphere, the upper layer of the Earth's atmosphere.
The IMAP orbiter (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) will be in charge of analyzing and mapping with unprecedented detail the heliosphere, a region located 14,000 million kilometers from Earth that is generated by the magnetic particles coming from the Sun, and that protects the solar system from cosmic radiation.
This region of space has only been traversed by the two Voyager probes, the last of which was launched into space almost six decades ago, so the knowledge that the space agency possesses about the heliosphere is limited.
The mission will study the interaction between interstellar space at the edge of the heliosphere, solar activity, and how the Sun's charged particles are energized to form the solar wind, a phenomenon that affects activity on the Earth.
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The data collected by the probe will also be useful for future manned space missions, such as those of the Artemis program that foresee the return of humans to the Moon, since it will provide essential information on the effects of solar wind on astronauts.
Another of the missions includes a satellite from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States, which will continuously study the activity of the Sun and monitor the solar wind, while the third corresponds to the Carruthers Geocorona observatory, which will analyze the exosphere and map this extensive region of changing conditions due to the action of the Sun on it.
