ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
On Wednesday, a SpaceX rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying multiple spacecraft.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Three, two, one, engines full power. And liftoff. Go...
LIMBONG: The destination - the spot in between the sun and the Earth where the gravitational pull between the two are in equilibrium. Why there? And what are scientists hoping to learn? We're joined now by Princeton University astrophysics professor David McComas, who is the principal investigator of the primary mission. David, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
DAVID MCCOMAS: Hi. Great to be with you.
LIMBONG: So let's just start at the beginning. What is your project hoping to study?
MCCOMAS: The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe is a new NASA mission that studies three things, basically. It studies the material coming out from the sun. Second, it follows the solar wind all the way out to the boundaries of our heliosphere. And then thirdly, we have space weather, which is very important for our technological society, which is material coming out from the sun that can accelerate particles that have a large impact on our space environment and can cause solar storms here at Earth.
LIMBONG: OK, so as I understand it, the heliosphere - we're inside the heliosphere, right?
MCCOMAS: Yeah, that's right. The heliosphere is nothing more than the Greek word helios, which means sun, and sphere means region of influence. So our heliosphere is nothing more than the region of influence of our sun.
LIMBONG: So how do solar winds and solar storms impact our planet?
MCCOMAS: Yeah, so space weather is this really important field that's becoming more and more important as we become more technological. These days, we rely on space for so many things - communications, GPS. I mean, for example, when GPS has a problem, farmers' tractors in the fields don't stay in the right rows of crops and they can cross the rows of crops - things like that. So the world has now just become more and more dependent on space and the satellites that we have in space.
They're affected by space weather, and when the sun pushes out a large bubble of new materials - something we call a coronal mass ejection - it accelerates a lot of these particles in advance of it, and it comes plowing out through the solar wind. That can cause really large solar storms in our own space environment and affect a lot of our technological infrastructure and even things like the power grid and power stations.
LIMBONG: I imagine a lot of prep went into this mission, yeah?
MCCOMAS: Oh, yeah. About a decade.
LIMBONG: About a decade - wow. What does it mean to you now that it's underway?
MCCOMAS: It's unbelievable. I can't tell you what it felt like when I watched the rocket go off, and it's just - it's so exciting, and it's unbelievable to be part of it and even more unbelievable to be leading a thing like this.
LIMBONG: Is there one thing you're particularly stoked about learning? - like, one maybe not full answer to a question, but, like, something that'll help you find an answer to a question?
MCCOMAS: Actually, the thing I'm most stoked about is what I don't know. We have 10 wonderful instruments. We make a really complete set of observations of particle acceleration, the outer heliosphere, space weather. That's all great, and we know we're going to take a lot of great measurements, and we know we're going to be able to answer a lot of the questions that we're able to pose today.
But what I'm most excited about is whenever you fly a mission like this with such better capabilities, what you find is that there are other things you'd never thought about before, and you make true discoveries of really new things. And you can't even pose that question today, so you don't know what you're going to ask for. That's, like, the most exciting part for me.
LIMBONG: You were there at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida during the launch, right?
MCCOMAS: Yep, absolutely. I was in the control room and then ran over to a viewing site to be with my family and then went right back to the control room.
LIMBONG: Was it a big day? Did you, like, pop bottles at the end? How - what was the whole experience like?
MCCOMAS: The biggest - it was the biggest.
LIMBONG: That's Princeton University astrophysics professor David McComas. Thanks so much.
MCCOMAS: Well, thank you so much. It's been great talking to you.
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