A “cosmic carpool” is traveling to a distant space weather observation post

Now departing

“It’s like a bus. You wait for one and then three come at the same time.”

NASA's IMAP spacecraft (top), the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory (left), and NOAA's first operational space weather satellite (right) shared a ride to space on a Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday.

SpaceX

Scientists loaded three missions worth nearly $1.6 billion on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for launch Wednesday, toward an orbit nearly a million miles from Earth, to measure the supersonic stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun.