page_title: Interstellar Boundary Explorer
section_title: Data collection
hierarchical_section_title: Interstellar Boundary Explorer / Mission / Data collection
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) map of the heliosphere, produced with data from the IBEX-Hi instrument operating at 0.9-1.5 keV.
context_page_description: Interstellar Boundary Explorer is a NASA satellite in Earth orbit that uses energetic neutral atoms to image the interaction region between the Solar System and interstellar space. The mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and was launched with a Pegasus-XL rocket on October 19, 2008.
  The mission is led by Dr. David J. McComas, formerly of the Southwest Research Institute and now with Princeton University. The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center built the IBEX-Hi and IBEX-Lo sensors respectively. The Orbital Sciences Corporation manufactured the spacecraft bus and was the location for spacecraft environmental testing. The nominal mission baseline duration was two years after commissioning, and the prime ended in early 2011. The spacecraft and sensors are still healthy and the mission is continuing in its extended mission.
  IBEX is in a Sun-oriented spin-stabilized orbit around the Earth. In June 2011, IBEX was shifted to a new, more efficient, much more stable orbit. It does not come as close to the Moon in the new orbit, and expends less fuel to maintain its position.
context_section_description: IBEX is collecting energetic neutral atom (ENA) emissions that are traveling through the Solar System to Earth that cannot be measured by conventional telescopes. These ENAs are created on the boundary of our Solar System by the interactions between solar wind particles and interstellar medium particles.
  On the average IBEX-Hi detects about 500 particles per day, and IBEX-Lo, less than 100. By 2012, over 100 scientific papers related to IBEX were published, described by the PI as "an incredible scientific harvest".
caption: High-energy map of the heliosphere
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