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Probe to examine Uranus

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As the solar system carts around our little section of the Milky Way galaxy, it disturbs the relative calm and cold fabric of intergalactic space. Not much is known about this boundary, except that the meeting is far from sedate -- something akin to a boat slamming through water at 50,000 mph.

So far, only the Voyager probes have crossed into the boundary zone, some eight to nine billion miles from Earth, with surprising results. On Sunday, NASA plans to launch a spacecraft that for the first time will be able to map the zone -- without having to go there.

The spacecraft is known as the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX. It works by detecting particles that were stripped of electric charges in the outer regions of the heliosphere, the solar wind-filled bubble that delineates our solar system from intergalactic space.
moon.

The particles are called energetic neutral atoms and they were discovered accidentally about 20 years ago during a mission that studied the Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind. Instruments on the satellites to measure what should have been low background levels of energetic particles sometimes detected extra counts.

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(Yes, I was being facetious, I couldn't resist!)
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