NASA has selected a mission to study the cosmic matter between stars
While space is largely devoid of matter, it does contain some gas and dust that floats between stars, material known as the interstellar medium. NASA has selected the Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO) mission to conduct the first complete study of this matter, to better understand how it behaves, .
Interstellar objects such as stars, black holes, and galaxies get a lot of attention from scientists, but the interstellar medium isn’t a trivial thing to study: it makes up about 15 percent of the total mass in the Milky Way. 99 percent of that is free floating gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, and while space is still pretty empty (We’re talking a density of an atom per cubic centimeter), the vast...