Our solar system is travelling through the Inter Space Medium on its way around the center of the Milky Way. One of the missions to map the edge of our solar system was undertaken when the IBEX spacecraft was dropped from the belly of a high-altitude jet and sent into an extremely elliptical orbit around Earth. The orbit takes the craft 4/5ths the distance to the Moon and allows it to image the edge of the Heliosphere like never before. After ten years in service, the information the IBEX mission is reporting back to mission control, is that there is a unique feature interacting with a specific area of our out solar system.

What is it and how does it affect live here on Earth? The discussion within details what is so important about ENAs (Energetically Neutral Atoms). The particles zip away from interacting with charged particle after exchanging their charged ion to another, non-energetic type particle. The process can be imaged and when there is more activity in particular area, it can be quantified and mapped.

So come inside and sit down for a discussion about IBES and ENAs with the man who probably knows the most, Dr. Stephen Fuselier.

Dr. Fuselier has over 35 years of experience as a scientist, project manager and senior manager for scientists, engineers, and technicians. He was Co-Investigator on the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) Co-Investigator and sensor lead on the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, and Co-Investigator and lead for the Hot Plasma Composition Experiment (HPCA) on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission.

he Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission is designed to explore the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system. IBEX carries two energetic neutral atom (ENA) imagers that observes ENAs created at the edge of the heliosphere flowing unimpeded towards the inner solar system. The IBEX mission has made the first all-sky maps of the boundary between our solar system and local interstellar medium, resulting in new discoveries of plasma interactions and insight into the local interstellar magnetic field. IBEX has also been utilized to study ENAs produced by interactions in the Earth’s magnetosphere and has produced the first ENA images of the magnetospheric cusps and magnetotail plasma sheet. Along with being the PI institution of the IBEX mission, SwRI also developed and built the IBEX ENA imagers.

May 4, 2021 — Dr. Stephen Fuselier, executive director of Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science Directorate, was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

NAS membership is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. With this distinction, Fuselier was also elected to the Academy of Medicine, Engineering & Science of Texas (TAMEST) as well. TAMEST is composed of the Texas-based members of the three national academies — of medicine, engineering and sciences — the Royal Society and the state’s 11 Nobel Laureates.

Fuselier was among 120 engineers and scientists elected this year to NAS, which has 2,461 active members. Notable past members include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Orville Wright. Approximately 500 current and deceased Academy members have won Nobel Prizes.

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