The latest project from NASA

A small spacecraft from NASA was launched this weekend, it will embark on a two-year mission to give scientists their first view of the happenings at the edge of the solar system.  The spacecraft is called the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or Ibex probe for short, will study a chaotic region in space where the solar wind from the sun clashes with cold gases from interstellar space.  

The Ibex prone is a $165 million dollar mission that will build on the long-running Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.  Observations from the spacecraft will help researchers in "unlocking the secrets of this important interaction between the sun and the galaxy," said chief scientist David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

The Ibex is only the size of a bus tire and will be lifted 130 miles above Earth by a Pegasus rocket and put into orbit.

-Carly Youngren