SpaceX will launch NASA's ambitious IMAP mission and two other space weather probes early Wednesday morning (Sept. 24), and you can watch the action live.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday at 7:30 a.m. EDT (1130 GMT), carrying IMAP and two rideshare spacecraft deep into the final frontier.
You can watch it live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA, or directly via the space agency. Coverage is expected to will begin around 6:40 a.m. EDT (1040 GMT).
The primary payload is IMAP, whose name is short for "Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe."
IMAP "will study how the sun's energy and particles interact with the heliosphere — an enormous protective bubble of space around our solar system — to enhance our understanding of space weather, cosmic radiation, and their impacts on Earth and human and robotic space explorers," NASA officials wrote in a mission description.
Launching with IMAP are NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (CGO) and the Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft, which will be operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
CGO will study Earth's exosphere — the atmosphere's wispiest outer reaches — to help scientists better understand how space weather affects our planet. SWFO-L1 will monitor and track solar storms, "serving as an early warning beacon for potentially disruptive space weather, helping safeguard Earth’s critical infrastructure and technological-dependent industries," NASA officials wrote in the mission description.
The trio will do this work at the Earth-sun Lagrange Point-1 (L1), a gravitationally stable spot that lies 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from our planet. Several other spacecraft operate at L1, including India's Aditya-L1 solar probe and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint effort of NASA and the European Space Agency.
If all goes according to plan on Wednesday, the Falcon 9's upper stage will deploy IMAP, CGO and SWFO-L1 into interplanetary transfer orbit during a 13-minute stretch that begins about 83 minutes after liftoff. The three spacecraft will then make their way out to L1.
Editor's note: This story was updated at 4:25 p.m. ET on Sept. 22 with the new target launch date of Sept. 24.
