On Sunday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched its Interstellar Boundary Explorer (Ibex) spacecraft aboard a Pegasus rocket, on a two-year mission to explore the Solar System’s boundaries.

The probe is the first one to investigate the particle interactions that take place at the edges of our Solar System, where the latter encounters the matter that exists between the stars, called interstellar space.

In addition, the Ibex is expected to study the solar wind, as well, and possibly find the reason why its current pressure is the lowest one that has been registered during the last 50 years.

The level of the solar wind has been reported by scientists to had decreased by 25% over the past ten years, therefore the force that pushes particles from other areas in the galaxy towards the Solar System’s edge is now much weaker.

The 50 cm-wide octagonal Ibex, which was developed at the Southwest Research Institute, will be scanning the boundaries using two cameras that are to offer information concerning both the cosmic rays that head towards our Solar System and the solar particles the latter sends off into the galaxy.

The spacecraft’s mission is part of NASA’s Small Explorer program, which is aimed at funding space exploration efforts that cost less than $120 million.

Ibex has set out to make the first map of the heliospheric boundary of the Solar System, after the Voyager spacecraft offered important insight on the termination shock zone, which is the point where the solar wind interacts with the local interstellar medium and thus slows down to subsonic speeds.