It is the objective of Boston University's SPIDR mission to detect this dark matter and, in doing so, answer fundamental questions about the structure and evolution of the universe. Boston University's SPIDR satellite has been under development since 1999 and was recently selected by NASA's SMEX as one of two missions to implement. The SPIDR satellite will launch in 2005 at a total cost of $89 million to NASA.

Models show the universe as a webbed system of intertwining gaseous filaments. It is SPIDRs objective to detect and map this "cosmic web."