2003-01-13 | MISSIONS
CHIPS Satellite Lifts Off
NASA's Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS)
satellite roared into space
yesterday atop a Delta 2 rocket, to look for remnants of an supernova
that may have wreaked
a mini-extinction on Earth two million years ago. CHIPS will study the Local
Bubble, a region surrounding our solar system where the dust and gas of interstellar
space are especially thin. This "hole" in the interstellar medium
may have been blasted by a passing clump of volatile stars—called the Scorpius-Centaurus
OB Association (or "Sco-cen" for short). Astrophysicist Priscilla
Frisch has noticed that only after Sco-cen passed out of dangerous range did
modern humans evolve. Can intelligent life emerge only on planets far from supernovae?
CHIPS will attempt to confirm that a star erupted at roughly the same time
as this mini-extinction, and will look for dense interstellar clouds that could
pose a threat to Earth in the distant future, as our solar system drifts through
the galaxy.
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from NASA, Jan 13, 2003
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