NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission passed a critical design review (CDR) with NASA’s Permanent Review Board (SRB) last week. This mission-level review was the culmination of individual CDRs executed for all vehicles and subsystems. While there are still challenges to be faced as a team, the review panel is confident that IMAP is a plan for success.

While CDR is often the gateway to spacecraft construction, IMAP has already started building structural parts as well as critical components such as instrumentation and flight models. The complex dance of testing, cross-calibrating and integrating these parts with 10 instruments designed and built around the world is carefully managed so that the completed observatory is ready for opening in 2025.

IMAP will probe our solar environment, known as the heliosphere, and decode messages in particles from the Sun and beyond. The three toolsets will work together to create detailed maps of the Solar System’s boundaries using energetically neutral atoms moving from the edge to the Lagrange 1 (L1) point, the point between the Sun and Earth where gravitational forces are balanced. Other IMAP tools collect information about the Sun’s solar wind and provide timely space weather reports.

The head of the SRB noted that IMAP is “performing well” and has a lot of work to do.

Princeton University professor and IMAP principal investigator David J. McComas thanked the board for the good questions and said: “There will undoubtedly be new challenges between today and launch, but I have full confidence in the wonderful, dedicated and resilient team we have put together. “

“We’re finally starting to see the integration of all these efforts, which I find very impressive,” said Deputy Chief Inspector Nathan Schwadron. “We started with an idea. We came up with the concept, and then the momentum shifted to actually building the hardware, building the spacecraft, and getting them to work together. It’s our commitment to explore as a team that helps move from concept to reality.”