Next launch up: NASA's IMAP probe and two ridesharing missions

Currently set for No Earlier Than 7:30 AM EDT tomorrow (9/24), IMAP is the next SpaceX launch from LC-39A on the Kennedy Space Center portion of Cape Canaveral Space.  Bound for the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, there are three payloads on this launch. The trajectory will be due east.

IMAP, or the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, is a NASA heliophysics mission that will map the boundaries of the heliosphere: the large bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. IMAP will study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond and will support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions near Earth. Falcon 9 will launch IMAP into a transfer orbit that will take it to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point – a gravitationally stable region 1.5 million kilometers from Earth (directly between Earth and the Sun) where the Sun and the Earth's gravity essentially balance each other. Also on board the mission is NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1, which will also head to the Earth-Sun L1 point. 

SpaceX tells us this is the second flight for this booster, B1096. This photo of the booster being delivered to 39A for tomorrow's launch was taken this past Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025. Image credit: SpaceX

NASA has produced an introductory trailer about the mission that strikes me as rather well done.  It's at the IMAP program site linked to in that quoted (indented) paragraph above and presented here.

Overview

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, will explore and map the very boundaries of our heliosphere — a huge bubble created by the Sun's wind that encapsulates our entire solar system — and study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond.

As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will also explore and chart the vast range of particles in interplanetary space, helping 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 at its boundary with interstellar space. Additionally, IMAP will support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions in the space environment near Earth. 

There are 10 instruments onboard the IMAP satellite, and more onboard its two rideshares, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.