Connecting the Sun, Heliosphere, and Local Interstellar Medium, Including First-Year Results from NASA’s IMAP Mission
Connecting the Sun, Heliosphere, and Local Interstellar Medium, Including First-Year Results from NASA’s IMAP Mission
Session ID#: 280821
Session Description:
NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) was launched in September 2025 with a payload of ten instruments designed to study the solar wind and its interaction with the very local interstellar medium (VLISM). With its unique capability to simultaneously observe the solar wind and interplanetary magnetic field, along with suprathermal particles, pickup ions, interstellar neutrals and their ultraviolet glow, energetic neutral atoms, and interstellar dust, IMAP provides unprecedented measurements of the plasma environment generated by the Sun, from the Sun-Earth L1 point to the outer heliosphere. In this session, we explore the initial scientific breakthroughs from IMAP’s first year of observations. We also welcome abstracts from the inner and outer heliosphere communities, including studies from current and past missions, as well as theoretical and modeling efforts, that advance our understanding of particle acceleration and the processes governing heliosphere-VLISM interactions.
Index Terms:
2114 Energetic particles [INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS]
2124 Heliopause and solar wind termination [INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS]
2129 Interplanetary dust [INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS]
2152 Pickup ions [INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS]
Primary Convener: J. Grant Mitchell, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States
Conveners: Nehpreet Kaur Walia, Princeton University, Princeton, United States and Fatemeh Rahmanifard, University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Space Science Center, Durham, NH, United States
See more of: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics