Ever wonder what’s inside a black hole, or how bright pulsars can get? NASA, in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, hopes to find answers with its new X-ray telescope.
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission launched today on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
This marks NASA’s first mission dedicated to measuring the polarization of X-rays from the most extreme and mysterious objects in the universe: supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
“IXPE represents another extraordinary first,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, said in a statement. “IXPE is going to show us the violent universe around us—such as exploding stars and the black holes at the center of galaxies—in ways we’ve never been able to see it.”
Following a successful launch and spacecraft separation, the telescope entered into orbit early this morning, circling Earth’s equator at an altitude of approximately 372 miles. Mission operators received the first spacecraft telemetry data less than an hour after take off.
“This is just the beginning for IXPE,” according to principal investigator Martin Weisskopf of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “We have much work ahead. But tonight, we celebrate!” Weisskopf, who has conducted experiments in X-ray astronomy since the 1970s, came up with the idea for the Imagine X-ray Polarimetry Explorer.
The spacecraft carries three state-of-the-art telescopes with special polarization-sensitive detectors that track and measure four properties of light: direction, arrival time, energy, and polarization. Data about incoming X-rays is combined to create an image that scientists hope will refine their theories about celestial environments and the objects inside them.
This mission, according to NASA, builds on and compliments discoveries of other telescopes, including the agency’s flagship Chandra X-ray Observatory. First light operations are scheduled to begin in January.
