NASA Partnerships

Current Projects

The IBEX Logo (Courtesy of NASA)

Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)

Paul H. Knappenberger, Ph.D., Lindsay Bartolone, Michelle Nichols, Julieta Aguilera, Grace Wolf-Chase, Ph.D.

IBEX is a NASA-funded Small Explorer satellite mission that orbits Earth and maps the boundary of the Solar System. The Adler Planetarium is the lead Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) institution for the IBEX mission, and Adler’s president, Paul H. Knappenberger, Jr., Ph.D. is a co-investigator on the mission.

Since the IBEX mission began, Adler Planetarium staff have developed a wide range of materials and products to help explain the science behind the mission, including a planetarium show, educational materials for museums, programs for teachers, and more.

IBEX, a spacecraft about the size of a bus tire, has been scanning the sky using two specially designed ENA detectors to map the entire heliosphere boundary since it was launched on October 19, 2008. ENAs, or Energetic Neutral Atoms, are fast-moving particles with no charge created by the interactions between solar wind particles and interstellar medium particles at the edge of our Solar System. IBEX collects information about these particles, which is the only way we currently have of studying the entire edge of our Solar System all at once. The IBEX team is creating the very first maps of the numbers, energies, and directions of travel of these ENAs to know more about the processes occurring at the edge of our Solar System.

Project Update:

In October 2009, the IBEX team released the first results and maps from the mission, collected over the course of six months. The maps and data collected by IBEX show a "bright, narrow band of [ENAs] that was totally unpredicted by any previous theories or models," according to an update from Dave McComas, IBEX Principal Investigator. The explanation and origin of this "ribbon," or arc of high numbers of ENA particles, is still being debated by researchers. Before IBEX was launched, most theories predicted a relatively even distribution of ENAs across the sky. While this fairly even distribution has been detected, the "ribbon" was completely unexpected. More data and maps of the heliosphere are needed to fully understand the results of IBEX discoveries.

According to an August 2010 update from the IBEX team, the spacecraft has also taught scientists about how solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic field, or magnetosphere. This magnetosphere protects Earth's atmosphere from the solar wind, possibly preventing our atmosphere from being stripped away.
A second set of maps from IBEX was released in late September 2010, showing surprising changes in the level of ENAs being emitted from the heliosphere. Data collected by IBEX shows the large scale structure of the heliosphere has remained stable, but the intensity of ENAs has dropped 10 to 15 percent. Also, the "hotspot" of activity previously discovered has spread out and diminished along the accentuated ribbon. Scientists expected to see some small variations, but instead found there were significant changes over the course of just six months.

"The interaction of the Sun with the interstellar medium is far more dynamic and variable than anyone envisioned," according to Dave McComas in the official NASA news announcement.

IBEX continues to gather data from the outer reaches of the Solar System and challenge existing knowledge of the heliosphere.

For information about IBEX, new science results, and the mission’s education and public outreach efforts, please visit the IBEX website.

Follow IBEX on Twitter.
Learn more about IBEX on NASA’s website.
Watch an overview IBEX video on YouTube.
Become a fan of IBEX on Facebook.

NASA Science Education / Public Outreach Forums

Lindsay Bartolone, Michelle Nichols

NASA has funded four new Science Education and Public Outreach Forums (SEPOFs) to increase the overall coherence of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) program.  SEPOFs support the astrophysics, heliophysics, planetary and Earth science divisions of NASA SMD in the areas of E/PO Community Engagement and Development, E/PO Product and Project Activity Analysis, and SEPOF Coordination Committee Service. The Adler Planetarium is a member of two of these new forums – Heliophysics and Astrophysics.

The overall goal for the SEPOFs is increased awareness, knowledge, and understanding of stakeholders in the areas of best practices, existing NASA resources, and community expertise applicable to E/PO.  By coordinating and supporting the NASA E/PO Community, the NASA/SEPOF partnerships will lead to more effective, sustainable, and efficient utilization of NASA science discoveries and learning experiences.

For more information about NASA’s Science Mission Directorate efforts, check out NASA Science. To learn more about NASA Science E/PO Forums visit the  SMD E/PO Community website.

The LROC Logo (Courtesy of NASA)

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

Doug Roberts, Ph.D., Mark SubbaRao, Ph.D., Julieta Aguilera, Lindsay Bartolone, Angelique Rickhoff, Mike Wszalek

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is NASA's flagship robotic mission to the explore the Moon from a very low orbit.  The camera aboard LRO is capturing images of unprecedented detail of the lunar surface.  These data will be integrated into Adler's Moon Wall exhibition, which allows visitors to fly over a virtual version of the Moon, using the best image and height data available.

The Moon Wall exhibition was made possible by new computer science research, specifically the field of terrain rendering.  Robert Kooima, who was a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Chicago at the time, joined the Adler team to use his terrain rendering system, called Tellurian, to power the Moon Wall.  He also defended his Ph.D. thesis in Adler's Definiti Theater using the same software, which works in a curved surface as well as a flat one.

To learn more about the LRO mission and what researchers have discovered about conditions on the moon, visit our Featured Mission page.