IBEX: NASA Small
Explorer
[From NASA News Release, 26 January 2005.] satellite that will make the first map of the boundary between the solar system...
[From NASA News Release, 26 January 2005.] satellite that will make the first map of the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space has been selected as part of NASA's Small Explorer programme. The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission will be launched in 2008. IBEX is the first mission designed to detect the edge of the solar system. As the solar wind from the Sun flows out beyond Pluto, it collides with the material between the stars, forming a shock front. IBEX will carry two neutral atom imagers designed to detect particles from the termination shock at the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. IBEX will also study galactic cosmic rays, energetic particles from beyond the solar system that pose a health and safety hazard for humans exploring beyond Earth orbit. IBEX will make these observations from a highly elliptical orbit that takes it beyond the region where it could suffer interference from the Earth's magnetosphere. Dr David McComas of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio will lead IBEX which will cost approximately $134 million. The Small Explorer program (SMEX) comprises rapid, small and focused science exploration missions.
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of this course in 1962, he was selected by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai as a Research Associate. He joined the X-ray Astronomy Programme, which was started at TIFR in 1967, and played a leading role in the development of X-ray astronomy instruments and using them for timing and spectral studies of X-ray binaries in the 20-t00 keV band from balloon-borne observations. He was awarded Ph.D. degree of Mumbai University on the thesis 'Studies of Cosmic X-ray Sources using Balloon-borne Detectors' in 1972. Immediately after gaining his Ph.D., he joined Professor Gordon Garmire's X-ray Astronomy group at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, USA as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and remained there for 3 years. After returning from Caltech in late 1975, he resumed his research at TIFR in hard X-ray astronomy from balloon observations and also initiated the development of a soft X-ray instrument to be flown in rockets for studies of the diffuse soft cosmic X-ray background from 0.1 to 2 keV. In 1978, he joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA as a NAS-NRC Senior Resident Research Associate (RRA) and studied soft X-ray emission from different type of sources using data from LEDs of the HEAO-A2 experiment. He was a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Space and Astronautical Sciences (ISAS), Japan from
COSPAR Personalities P r a h l a d C. A g r a w a l - Chair: Panel on Technical Problems Scientific Ballooning
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rahlad C. Agrawal was born on 15 April 1941 in Ratlam, India. After graduating from Vikram University, Ujjain in Science in 1961, he joined the BARC Training School for its Post-graduation Training Course in Physics.Following the successful completion