Latest Interstellar Boundary Explorer Stories

John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While our solar system contains many fascinating objects – planets, moons and the Sun, to name just a few – one of the most interesting and perplexing of these objects lies at its very edge. Our Sun sweeps charged particles through the solar system, encasing us in a cocoon that shields us from the interstellar environment. It is at the boundary of the solar system, where the solar wind slows and the influence of our...

[ Watch the Video ] A team of NASA researchers has uncovered new data showing that the sun is moving more slowly through our galaxy than previously believed -- a discovery that suggests a shock wave believed to precede the heliosphere might not actually exist, the US space agency revealed on Thursday. According to Andrew Fazekas of National Geographic News, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) satellite measured the speeds of various interstellar particles along the outer edges...

On April 5, 2010, the sun spewed a two million-mile-per-hour stream of charged particles toward the invisible magnetic fields surrounding Earth, known as the magnetosphere. As the particles interacted with the magnetic fields, the incoming stream of energy caused stormy conditions near Earth. Some scientists believe that it was this solar storm that interfered with commands to a communications satellite, Galaxy-15, which subsequently foundered and drifted, taking almost a year to return to...

[ Watch the Video ] This just in:  The Solar System is different from the space just outside it. Researchers announced the finding at a press conference on Jan. 31, 2012. It’s based on data from NASA’s IBEX spacecraft, which is able to sample material flowing into the solar system from interstellar space. “We’ve detected alien matter that came into our solar system from other parts of the galaxy--and, chemically speaking, it’s not exactly like what we find here at home.”...

[ Watch the Video ] Researchers have measured neutral "alien" particles that have entered our solar system from interstellar space. The team used NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft to find the neutral particles, which make up about half the material outside the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the bubble in which our Sun and planets reside and is formed by the interaction between the solar wind and the interstellar medium. Electrically charged particles cannot...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has captured the best and most complete glimpse yet of what lies beyond the solar system. The new measurements give clues about how and where our solar system formed, the forces that physically shape our solar system, and the history of other stars in the Milky Way. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Earth-orbiting spacecraft observed four...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a Science Update at 1 p.m. EST, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, to discuss new analysis from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft of material from outside our solar system and the interstellar boundary region that surrounds our home in space. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The interstellar boundary region shields our solar system from most of the dangerous galactic cosmic...

In a paper to be published in the April 10, 2011, issue of The Astrophysical Journal, scientists on NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, including lead author Nathan Schwadron and others from the University of New Hampshire, isolate and resolve the mysterious "ribbon" of energy and particles the spacecraft discovered in the heliosphere "“ the huge bubble that surrounds our solar system and protects us from galactic cosmic rays.The finding, which overturns 40 years...

Close to the globe, Earth's magnetic field wraps around the planet like a gigantic spherical web, curving in to touch Earth at the poles. But this isn't true as you get further from the planet. As you move to the high altitudes where satellites fly, nothing about that field is so simple. Instead, the large region enclosed by Earth's magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere, looks like a long, sideways jellyfish with its round bulb facing the sun and a long tail extending away from the...

Invisible to the naked eye, yet massive in structure around the Earth is the magnetosphere, the region of space around the planet that ebbs and flows in response to the million-mile-per-hour flow of charged particles continually blasting from the Sun. NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, designed to image the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, captured images of magnetospheric structures and a dynamic event occurring in the magnetosphere as...