NASA has launched its sophisticated orbiting X-ray telescope, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), which has been billed as a 'Black Hole Hunter.'
The US space agency launched NuSTAR on Wednesday, June 13. The telescope is expected to reveal some of the mysteries of the universe. NuSTAR was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean to low-Earth orbit. What is used for medical imaging and security machines in airports i.e. x-ray, is produced by some of the exotic objects in the universe. NuSTAR will be looking for these rays and capture images of cosmic bodies like black holes and neutron stars.
NuSTAR is hundred times more sensitive than the previous telescopes and is also ten times better. The current x-ray telescopes like Chandra X-ray Observatory and European Space Agency's XMM-Newton can look at the heavenly objects emitting lower energy x-rays but fail to bring higher energy wavelengths into focus. Jeffery Hoffman, an astronomer not related with the mission, believes NuSTAR team is going to make new and exciting discoveries for sure.
The small explorer projects working on the launch of NuSTAR is actually a series of space exploration programs that costs about $120 million each. This project or program was announced just after the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEM) space observatory program was cancelled as expenses had overshot the budget. That project was also related with an X-ray telescope.
NuSTAR launched from Kwajalein Atoll at 12 noon Eastern Time (ET) on June 13. "NuSTAR will open a whole new window on the universe," said Fiona Harrison, the lead investigator on NuSTAR and a professor at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "NuSTAR will help us find the most elusive and most energetic black holes, to help us understand the structure of the universe." It was launched in a folded position at first and then will extend in about a week.
