Spacecraft blasts off to probe edge of solar system

(CNN) -- A NASA spacecraft circled the Earth on Monday at the start of a project to study the edges of the solar system.

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission rocketed into space Sunday afternoon high above an island in the Pacific Ocean, the space agency said in a statement.

If all goes according to plan, IBEX will become the first spacecraft to map an outer boundary of the solar system -- a place where solar wind smashes into the gases from outside the solar system.

It's an important region to study, researchers say, because it shields most dangerous cosmic rays that would otherwise rush into the space around Earth.

"No one has seen an image of the interaction at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind collides with interstellar space," said David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, the mission's principal investigator.

"We know we're going to be surprised," he said in a statement.

Controllers launched the IBEX craft on Sunday afternoon from the Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific.

After a 45-day "checkout period," the craft will start its mission. The craft will map a distant region by measuring the impact on the spacecraft of high-speed particles -- called energetic neutral atoms -- that radiate outward from that region, the space agency said.

"IBEX will let us visualize our home in the galaxy for the first time and explore how it may have evolved over the history of the solar system," McComas said on the space agency's Web site.

"Ultimately, by making the first images of the interstellar boundaries neighboring our solar system, IBEX will provide a first step toward exploring the galactic frontier."

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