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Technicians at Astrotech Space Operations Facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida encapsulate NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe), along with the agency’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Follow On–Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025, inside a SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing. The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind — the continuous stream of particles emitted by the Sun — and space weather — the changing conditions in space driven by the Sun — from their origins at the Sun to their farthest reaches billions of miles away at the edge of our solar system.

Credit: NASA/BAE Systems/Benjamin Frye