NuSTAR

NASA’s explorer mission Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft is being attached to the Pegasus XL rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California, US.

The launch of the rocket is scheduled for 21 March 2012 following delays to provide the launch vehicle team with an additional week to complete the required engineering reviews.

The launch vehicle team will commence final preparations following the reviews, after which the rocket and spacecraft will be flown to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific.

Being the first space telescope to orbit Earth and capture sharp images in high-energy X-rays, NuSTAR will investigate the hottest, densest and most energetic objects in space, as well as black holes and the remains of exploded stars.

NuSTAR will provide astronomers with new equipment to understand the intense part of the universe and is anticipated to surpass the performance of the largest ground-based observatories that have observed the electromagnetic spectrum.

During the mission, NuSTAR will carry out reviewed observations to discoveries made by Chandra and Spitzer, and will unite with Fermi to make instantaneous observations enhancing Fermi’s science return.

The Small Explorer mission is led by the California Institute of Technology and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

The spacecraft will be operated by UC Berkeley with its outreach programme based at Sonoma State University, while the Italian Space Agency will provide its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya.

NuSTAR was developed by Orbital Sciences, while its instrument was built by a consortium which includes Caltech, JPL, Columbia University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Danish Technical University, the University of California and ATK Aerospace Systems.

 

Image: The Pegasus XL rocket equipped with NuSTAR spacecraft is scheduled to launch on 21 March 2012. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech.