NASA announced Friday that it has awarded SpaceX a $109.4 million contract to launch its Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), along with four secondary payloads, on a mission to investigate the magnetic barrier surrounding our solar system in October 2024.

After passing all the solar system's planets, the solar wind eventually collides with, is contained by, and excludes competing solar winds from other solar systems, forming a protective barrier around the solar system known as the "heliosphere." It is this heliosphere that diminishes the amount of cosmic radiation entering the solar system and keeps it from eventually hitting Earth.

In 2018, NASA first estimated the cost of building the IMAP spacecraft at $492 million, "excluding cost for the launch vehicle." In April, the Government Accountability Office estimated the total mission cost with the launch vehicle could reach anywhere from $707.7 million to $776.3 million.