WASHINGTON, Oct 19: The US space agency is to launch a space probe that will go into orbit high above earth to study the distant edge of the solar system where hot solar winds crash into cold outer space.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is on a two-year mission to take pictures and chart the mysterious confines of the solar system, located billions of kilometres from Earth.

The IBEX is equipped with instruments that will allow it to take images and for the first time chart a remote region known as the interstellar boundary, where the solar system meets interstellar space. The area is a vast expanse of turbulent gas and twisting magnetic fields.

“The interstellar boundary regions are critical because they shield us from the vast majority of dangerous galactic cosmic rays, which otherwise would penetrate into Earth’s orbit and make human spaceflight much more dangerous,” said David McComas, IBEX principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas.

The only information that scientists have of this distant region are from the twin Voyager 1 and 2 probes, launched in 1977 and still in service today.—AFP