Blogs

The Princeton IMAP and Outreach Teams welcomed approximately 200 visitors to an engaging afternoon of science, discovery, and hands-on learning on February 1st, at the Princeton Public Library. Families, students, and community members explored the science behind the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, talked with IMAP mission team science and engineering experts and gained a deeper understanding of our solar neighborhood and heliophysics. Visitors participated in a variety of interactive activities. The “Modeling the Heliosphere” water demonstration helped illustrate the edge of our solar system and how the heliosphere acts as a protective ...

IMAP and FTPP participated in Rocket City Weather Fest 2026! ☀️ Rocket City Weather Fest is a free, family-friendly community event focused on weather, space, and atmospheric science through interactive learning experiences. Designed for all ages, the event brings together educators, researchers, and organizations to make complex science approachable, engaging, and fun through hands-on demonstrations and activities. At our table, we featured the IMAP hands-on activity: IMAP: How the Solar Wind Blows Participants explored how solar wind travels through space and interacts with Earth’s space environment. The activity encouraged curiosity and ...

On Saturday, January 17, 2026, Flandrau welcomed the community for a special IMAP STEM Outreach event that offered visitors an engaging and interactive opportunity to explore the IMAP mission. Through hands-on activities, demonstrations and special planetarium presentations, guests gained a deeper understanding of the science behind the mission and its importance to heliophysics research. Guests explored five interactive activity stations - Modeling the Heliosphere, Communicating in Color, How the Solar Wind Blows, Mystery Matter, and IMAP I Spy – which encouraged curiosity, conversations, and active participation among guests of all ages. These experiences ...

IMAP and FTPP participated in STEAMFest! STEAMFest is a free to attend, family-friendly festival that celebrates Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) through hands-on activities, live demonstrations, and exhibits. It is the main event of the Alabama Science Festival and features a wide range of attractions, including robotics, space exploration, paleontology, and live shows. This year, the event was held on the beautiful campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). We featured three IMAP hands-on activities : IMAP Mystery Objects: Participants guessed what an object does and what it is ...

What a week! The IMAP launch brought not just excitement around the launch site, pad, but a solar storm of outreach events. The Florida coast was buzzing with IMAP energy that stretched from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to local libraries, schools, and communities - and our team was right in the middle of it all! Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex (Sept 19–22): Outreach tables in the Atlantis building were packed all week long! We teamed up with our rideshare partners —Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (Carruthers) and Solar Wind Follow On–L1 (SWFO-L1) — to share our collective mission stories. Visitors got hands-on with several IMAP activities ...

On September 6, 2025, the IMAP Outreach Program took over the Dr. Dare Lab at the Orlando Science Center for a day full of hands-on exploration about the IMAP mission! From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., visitors of all ages were invited to get to know about the IMAP mission, the mission science, and the spacecraft through six of our outreach activities: Modeling the Heliosphere, Artful Magnetism, Communicating in Color, Coding Curiosities, Mystery Matter, and IMAP I Spy. More than 200 participants came through the lab during the day, exploring, asking questions, and making discoveries about our Sun's influence. Orlando Science Center staff joined in as facilitators, ...

Our IMAP team partnered up with the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ to facilitate several IMAP activities and offer science talks by Dr. Jamie Rankin (instrument lead for the IMAP SWAPI instrument) to almost 100 participants on Saturday, 9/6. Visitors had the opportunity to try search for items with special tools in the iSpy IMAP activity, see the Modeling the Heliosphere water demonstration to better understand the edge of our solar system, create a bracelet during the Coding Curiosities activity and learn more about two phase rockets (like the one that IMAP will travel on for it's launch) with the Achieving Orbit activity. There was a 3D model ...

FTPP was thrilled to return to Tech Trek for a second year! This time, we had the opportunity to lead an interactive STEM session with 64 seventh-grade girls from across Alabama. Our workshop took students on a journey into the science of Particle Detection through a cosmic-themed Canva presentation titled "An Out of This World Presentation." The excitement didn’t stop there—students also participated in a hands-on activity that made the science feel real and accessible. Their engagement and curiosity shined throughout the entire session. To wrap things up, we encouraged students to write their questions and thoughts on Hey IMAP postcards as a way to reflect ...

FTPP participated in the North Alabama Regional Science and Engineering Fair ( NARSEF ) held on February 28, 2025, at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). We conducted an Interactive Mindfulness and Awareness Program (IMAP) event from IMAP Kit 11, focusing on Open-Mindedness, called "What Do You See." This activity fostered discussions on creativity and its significant impact on STEM fields, encouraging students to think innovatively and approach problems from diverse perspectives. In this activity specifically, students had to create something out of just a random line. I am proud to say we received a wide variety of submissions. Highlights: ...

We had 942 people join us for Astro Adventure Day which is one of my favorite events at MSC and I am happy to share that IMAP was apart of it this year. We took two of the activities and modified them to a more pop up oriented activity. We found Communication in Color, while fun, groups often couldn't stay long enough able to complete the full light bright picture so we decided that each group would add a little bit to each light bright until we had the full picture but we did still run into issues as groups had a hard time finding where the last group left off on the guide sheet and we still couldn't get a full completed picture with the pop up style activity. ...

Challenger Colorado hosted its first onsite public day for the 2024-2025 school year this past Saturday, October 12. Families used their team working and communication skills to decipher clues, activating 4 IMAP systems while decoding Messages from IMAP, completing the Ready, Set, Lift! activity and while racing against each and time in the IMAP Puzzle Race.

FTPP had the privilege of facilitating a workshop for Tech Trek, engaging 64 seventh-grade girls from Alabama. The workshop featured a Canva presentation titled 'An Out Of This World Presentation' on Particle Detection, complemented by an interactive activity. The students displayed great enthusiasm and participation throughout the session. To conclude, we orchestrated a simulated graduation ceremony, presenting each student with a goody bag containing an IMAP sticker, a pencil, a highlighter, and a personalized mini certificate as 'An Out Of This World Attendee'. The Particle Detection activity received exceptional feedback, scoring a perfect 10/10. Demographics ...

Challenger Colorado was happy to host local families for a Second Saturday Family Science event on Saturday, December 13th. Approximately 140 guests participated in IMAP outreach activities focused on the "how" of communications between the IMAP probe and Earth, and vice versa. Families tried their hand at "doodles" by attempting to draw a picture with a singular marker and 4 "operators", each with a string to help guide the marker to complete a simple drawing. Some families tried multiple times, improving on each attempt. Other families felt the frustration and moved on to alternate activities quickly. An ENA collection activity gave teams the chance ...