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NASA's Ready to Study Cool Ice, Hot Plasma and Ocean Winds - Continued The interstellar medium literally contains the seeds of future stars, and all the stars we see were once formed out of the same kind of diffuse gas and dust. When the gas in the interstellar medium cools and collapses, the gas forms clumps that scientists believe evolve into stars and planets. One of the biggest puzzles in astrophysics is the process that turns this very diffuse, hot and cold gas and dust into stars. Our solar system is located in a region of space scientists call the Local Bubble, which is about 300 light-years in diameter and is filled with gas much less dense than the average interstellar medium. This gas also is extremely hot - - about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, or about 180 times as hot as the surface of our Sun. It is this extremely diffuse gas inside the Local Bubble that the CHIPS mission is studying. The CHIPS satellite weighs 60 kilograms (132 pounds) and is the size of a large suitcase. It will orbit about 590 kilometers (367 miles) above the Earth and is expected to operate for one year. The CHIPS satellite is sponsored by the Office of Space Science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The CHIPS instrument was built at the Space Science Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley, and the spacecraft bus was built by SpaceDev, Inc. of Poway, Calif. The project is managed at Wallops Flight Facility, through the NASA Explorers Program. A third NASA mission, SeaWinds, is NASA's latest Earth- monitoring instrument for measuring the speed and direction of winds over Earth's oceans. Set to launch aboard Japan's Advanced Earth Observing Satellite II (Adeos II) at 8:31 p.m. EST on Dec.13 from the Tanegashima Space Center, the mission is expected to yield improved global weather forecasts and new insights into various Earth research investigations. The mission will help scientists determine the location, structure and strength of severe marine storms -- hurricanes in the Atlantic, typhoons near Asia and mid-latitude cyclones worldwide -- which are among the most destructive of all natural phenomena. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a chief mission partner, will use the data to improve weather forecasting and storm warnings, helping forecasters more accurately determine the paths and intensities of tropical storms and hurricanes. More information
about the ICESat program is available at: http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/intro.html
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