Mobile phone users will help unlock the secrets of the Solar System. NASA is
planning to piggyback an astronomy mission on a commercial communications
satellite. Its Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS) will be
launched in 2001 on a Russian Cosmos rocket. While the satellite relays
telephone calls, the attached spectrometer will scan the sky for extreme
ultraviolet radiation to determine the types of plasma in the Local Bubble, an
area surrounding the Sun that is thought to be filled with ionised gas.
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