Shensuo

Shensuo (), formerly Interstellar Express, is a proposed Chinese National Space Administration program designed to explore the heliosphere and interstellar space. The program will feature two or three space probes that were initially planned to be launched in 2024 and follow differing trajectories to encounter Jupiter to assist them out of the Solar System. The first probe, IHP-1, would have traveled toward the nose of the heliosphere, possibly performing a flyby of 50000 Quaoar on the way, while the second probe, IHP-2, will fly near to the tail, skimming by Neptune and Triton in January 2038. There may be another probe—tentatively IHP-3—which would launch in 2030 to explore to the northern half of the heliosphere.

== History == The heliosphere and the interstellar medium have so far been explored by only three NASA probes: Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and New Horizons. Both Voyagers used gravity assists to take them out of the plane of the ecliptic: Voyager 1 to the north with Saturn in 1980, and Voyager 2 to the south with Neptune in 1989. New Horizons was designed to stay within the plane to allow for exploration of other Kuiper belt objects. However, none of these probes are exploring the tail of the heliosphere; Pioneer 10, which was headed toward the tail after its Jupiter flyby in 1973, lost contact with Earth in 2003. Later spacecraft which would remain within the Solar System, such as Cassini–Huygens, have gathered valuable data on the heliosphere and how it interacts with the interstellar medium, suggesting that the heliosphere is not shaped like a comet but is rather spherical.