Chess (Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph) is a mission of NASA to study matter between stars.
The space between distant stars is not empty. It contains drifts of vast clouds of neutral atoms and molecules, as well as charged plasma particles called the interstellar medium, which may, over millions of years, evolve into new stars and even planets.
The mission will study the interaction of the stellar wind with the surrounding interstellar medium to study the excitation of atoms and molecules in the interface region.
