The University of California, Berkeley, has awarded a contract to SpaceDev Inc. to develop a small satellite that will collect data about hot plasma floating in the vast spaces between the stars.

The spacecraft, called CHIPSat, will be the first in NASA's University-Class Explorer (UNEX) series of low-cost science missions managed by academic institutions with "minimal oversight" by the space agency. CHIPSat, weighing about 187 pounds (85 kilograms) will carry a single scientific instrument, the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer (CHIPS).

Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory is managing the $12 million CHIPSat project. SpaceDev's contract is worth about $5 million and includes building the satellite and integrating it into a launch vehicle, among other functions. Launch is planned to take place in early 2002.

The spacecraft will "study the very hot interstellar plasma that's believed to exist within roughly 100 light-years of the solar system," says Mark Hurwitz, a Berkeley scientist and principal investigator for CHIPS. The plasma, says Hurwitz, is "probably the remnant" of one or more supernova explosions.