NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer mission, or
IBEX will be the first spacecraft to
image and map dynamic interactions taking place in the outer solar
system.

IBEX will build an image of the outer boundary of
the solar system from impacts on the spacecraft by high-speed
particles called energetic neutral atoms. These particles are created
in the boundary region when the 1-million mph solar wind blows out in
all directions from the sun and plows into the gas of interstellar
space. This region is important to study because it shields many of
the dangerous cosmic rays that would flood the space around Earth.

"No one has seen an image of the interaction at the edge of our solar
system where the solar wind collides with interstellar space," said