A team of astrophysicists that includes Dr. Gary Zank, chair of the Department of Space Science and the director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), has been awarded $496 million by NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes (STP) Program to fund the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission concept. In keeping with the priorities outlined in the National Research Council’s “Decadal Strategy for Solar and Space Physics,” the mission will seek to advance critical scientific objectives of understanding our home in the galaxy, contribute to the fundamental understanding of the Sun-Earth system, and produce secondary observations critical to space-weather related societal needs.