SpaceX is preparing to launch three spacecraft on a first-of-its-kind mission to study the sun's influence throughout the solar system, from Earth's atmosphere to the edge of interstellar space.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex-39A, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on Sept. 23 at 7:32 a.m. EDT (1132 GMT). Stowed inside Falcon's payload fairing are NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), the Space Weather Follow-on (SWFO-L1) spacecraft from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and NASA's Carruthers Geocorona Observatory.

The satellite trio is bound for the Earth-sun Lagrange Point-1 (L1), an orbitally stable location in permanent sunlight that lies 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. Thou

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