IBEX Explorer

[Sky Pilot]

I just read the news today about NASA selecting the IBEX explorer to take images of the outer boundary of the solar system. Does anyone know the velocity this spacecraft will achieve and how long it will take for it to reach the outer boundary? I'm hoping I'll still be alive to learn of its findings!!

[andersa]

I just read the news today about NASA selecting the IBEX explorer to take images of the outer boundary of the solar system. Does anyone know the velocity this spacecraft will achieve and how long it will take for it to reach the outer boundary? I'm hoping I'll still be alive to learn of its findings!!

This was reported on Slashdot too, and several readers (including myself) first interpreted the news as being about an interplanetary probe. However, IBEX is appearantly a satellite meant for Earth orbit, although a highly elliptical one taking it outside the Earth's magnetosphere, from where it will remotely study the solar system boundary by other than visual means.

The distance to that boundary is still unclear, and the Pioneer and Voyager probes (now some 100 AU away from the Sun) don't seem to have crossed it yet. We could probably send a new probe going faster than Voyager today, it too leaving the solar system. However, if we want it to stay in Sun orbit and cross the boundary multiple times, it would have to go at much slower speed, probably not reaching aphelion within this century.

Given the vastness of space, it's probably easier to study the solar system boundary from home than by actually going there, for much the same reason that most oceanographic research facilities are located on land, not in the middle of the sea.