UPCOMING MISSIONS
IMAP
Launch Date: September 2025
Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, FL
Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9
NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will explore and map the very boundaries of our heliosphere – the electro-magnetic bubble surrounding the Sun and planets inflated by the solar wind – and study how it interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond. IMAP is a simple Sun-pointed spinner in orbit about the Sun-Earth L1 point, where gravitational forces between the Earth and Sun balance. As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will use its ten instruments to explore and chart the vast range of particles in interplanetary space and from beyond to investigate two of the most important overarching issues in Heliophysics – the energization of charged particles from the Sun, and the interaction of the solar wind with the nearby part of the interstellar medium that fills our galaxy.
Sentinel 6B
Launch Date: November 2025
Launch Site: Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA
Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon 9
The Jason Continuity of Service (Jason-CS) mission on the Sentinel-6 spacecraft is an international partnership between the U.S. and Europe. Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 includes two identical satellites with the first launched November 21, 2020 (Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich) and the second scheduled for launch in 2025 (satellite B).
Jason-CS/Sentinel-6 will ensure continuity of sea level observations into a fourth decade. Like their predecessors, these satellites will provide ongoing measurements of global sea level rise – one of the most important indicators of human-caused climate change. The data will also support operational oceanography through improved forecasts of ocean currents as well as wind and wave conditions. This data will allow improvements in both short-term forecasting for weather predictions in the two- to four-week range (e.g. hurricane intensity predictions), and long-term forecasting for seasonal conditions (e.g. El Niño, La Niña).
Roman Space Telescope
Launch Date: By May 2027
Launch Site: Kennedy Space Center, FL
Launch Vehicle: SpaceX Falcon Heavy
Named after NASA’s first chief astronomer, the ‘mother of the Hubble Space Telescope,’ the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have a field of view at least 100 times larger than Hubble’s, potentially measuring light from a billion galaxies in its lifetime. This observatory will also be able to block starlight to directly see exoplanets and planet-forming disks, complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics.