NASA's NuSTAR Gearing up for Launch [merged]

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA's NuSTAR Gearing up for Launch

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r193/Waspie_Dwarf/30f5944f.jpg

Final pre-launch preparations are underway for NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR. The mission, which will use X-ray vision to hunt for hidden black holes, is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 13 from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The observatory will launch from the belly of Orbital Sciences Corporation's L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft aboard the company's Pegasus rocket.

Technicians at Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California are busy installing the rocket's fairing, or nose cone, around the observatory. A flight computer software evaluation is also nearing completion and should be finished before the Flight Readiness Review, which is scheduled for June 1. A successful launch simulation of the Orbital Sciences' Pegasus XL rocket was conducted last week.

The mission plan is for NuSTAR and its rocket to be attached to the Stargazer plane on June 2. The aircraft will depart California on June 5 and arrive at the Kwajalein launch site on June 6. The launch of NuSTAR from the plane is targeted for 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT) on June 13.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

2012-142

Source

Edited June 5, 2012 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Erudite Celt]

The only Black Hole they are likely to discover is the one swallowing up Billions of Dollars!

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The only Black Hole they are likely to discover is the one swallowing up Billions of Dollars!

And what mountain of evidence do you base that piece of wisdom on?

[Erudite Celt]

And what mountain of evidence do you base that piece of wisdom on?

Well Waspie Dwarf as is frequently the case with modern theoretical physics you ask more questions than you answer. I'd rather see fleets of rovers and probes on the terrestrial bodies of our solar system than see billions wasted on theories that can never be realistically or definably proved. I totally understand the concept of black hole theory which paradoxically means you can't prove it.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Erudite Celt

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Well Waspie Dwarf as is frequently the case with modern theoretical physics you ask more questions than you post answers.

Yes, but at least in modern theoretical physics there is some point to the questions and an attempt to answer them. I have yet to see any point to either of your posts in this topic so far. So I ask again, on what do you base your claim that this satellite is unlikely to find any black holes?

[Erudite Celt]

Yes, but at least in modern theoretical physics there is some point to the questions and an attempt to answer them. I have yet to see any point to either of your posts in this topic so far. So I ask again, on what do you base your claim that this satellite is unlikely to find any black holes?

Come back and slag me of publicly when you find the Higgs. It was on these very pages that you and many others proudly predicted it's discovery a few years back was it not? Still waiting...waiting.......waiting.........waiting. According to modern theory I could go on ad infinitum, but only one problem with that theory.....divide infinity by infinity. When you come back with an answer I will bow to your superior ideas of intellect!

[pallidin]

Will be great to see their findings!

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NuSTAR Strapped to its Plane

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r193/Waspie_Dwarf/7db515d9.jpg

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is now perched atop its Pegasus XL rocket, strapped to the plane that will carry the mission to an airborne launch. Launch is scheduled for June 13, no earlier than 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT).

plane -- the L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft -- is now at Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California. It is scheduled to fly to Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean from June 5 to 6. About an hour before launch, the plane will lift off from the island, and drop NuSTAR and its rocket over the ocean. The rocket will then ignite, carrying NuSTAR to its final orbit around Earth's equator.

NuSTAR will be the first space telescope to create sharp images of X-rays with high energies, similar to those used by doctors and dentists. It will conduct a census for black holes, map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants, and study the origins of cosmic rays and extreme physics around collapsed stars.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

Launch management and government oversight for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

2012-152

Source

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Pegasus rocket sets sail to launch NASA telescope

Slung beneath the belly of its L-1011 carrier jet, a three-stage Pegasus XL rocket and its NASA space telescope payload flew away from Vandenberg Air Force Base Tuesday afternoon en route to a distant atoll in the equatorial Pacific where the launch will originate next week.

The fully assembled rocket left its home port at 12:58 p.m. local (3:58 p.m. EDT; 1958 GMT) destined for the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, part of the U.S. Army's vast missile range in the central Pacific Ocean.

"This is the only air-launched vehicle in the world for small satellites so it really is a special airplane and a special rocket," said Bryan Baldwin, the long-time manager of the Pegasus program at Orbital Sciences.

Read more...

[ghostfreak7197]

NASA Preparing to Launch its Newest X-Ray Eyes

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, is being prepared for the final journey to its launch pad on Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. The mission will study everything from massive black holes to our own sun. It is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 13.

"We will see the hottest, densest and most energetic objects with a fundamentally new, high-energy X-ray telescope that can obtain much deeper and crisper images than before," said Fiona Harrison, the NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., who first conceived of the mission 20 years ago.

The observatory is perched atop an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket. If the mission passes its Flight Readiness Review on June 1, the rocket will be strapped to the bottom of an aircraft, the L-1011 Stargazer, also operated by Orbital, on June 2. The Stargazer is scheduled to fly from Vandenberg Air Force Base in central California to Kwajalein on June 5 to 6.

After taking off on launch day, the Stargazer will drop the rocket around 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT). The rocket will then ignite and carry NuSTAR to a low orbit around Earth.

"NuSTAR uses several innovations for its unprecedented imaging capability and was made possible by many partners," said Yunjin Kim, the project manager for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We're all really excited to see the fruition of our work begin its mission in space."

NuSTAR will be the first space telescope to create focused images of cosmic X-rays with the highest energies. These are the same types of X-rays that doctors use to see your bones and airports use to scan your bags. The telescope will have more than 10 times the resolution and more than 100 times the sensitivity of its predecessors while operating in a similar energy range.

The mission will work with other telescopes in space now, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, which observes lower-energy X-rays. Together, they will provide a more complete picture of the most energetic and exotic objects in space, such as black holes, dead stars and jets traveling near the speed of light.

"NuSTAR truly demonstrates the value that NASA's research and development programs provide in advancing the nation's science agenda," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director. "Taking just over four years from receiving the project go-ahead to launch, this low-cost Explorer mission will use new mirror and detector technology that was developed in NASA's basic research program and tested in NASA's scientific ballooning program. The result of these modest investments is a small space telescope that will provide world-class science in an important but relatively unexplored band of the electromagnetic spectrum."

NuSTAR will study black holes that are big and small, far and near, answering questions about the formation and physics behind these wonders of the cosmos. The observatory will also investigate how exploding stars forge the elements that make up planets and people, and it will even study our own sun's atmosphere.

The observatory is able to focus the high-energy X-ray light into sharp images because of a complex, innovative telescope design. High-energy light is difficult to focus because it only reflects off mirrors when hitting at nearly parallel angles. NuSTAR solves this problem with nested shells of mirrors. It has the most nested shells ever used in a space telescope: 133 in each of two optic units. The mirrors were molded from ultra-thin glass similar to that found in laptop screens and glazed with even thinner layers of reflective coating.

The telescope also consists of state-of-the-art detectors and a lengthy 33-foot (10-meter) mast, which connects the detectors to the nested mirrors, providing the long distance required to focus the X-rays. This mast is folded up into a canister small enough to fit atop the Pegasus launch vehicle. It will unfurl about seven days after launch. About 23 days later, science operations will begin.

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley); Columbia University in New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems in Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

For more information, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu .

image of NuStar's mirrors at http://www.nasa.gov/...-43_946-710.jpg

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NuSTAR Arrives at Island Launch Site

The plane that will carry NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array(NuSTAR) and its rocket to their airborne launch site arrives at Kwajalein Atoll, a coral island located midway between Hawaii and Australia. Image credit: Orbital Sciences Corporation.

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and its rocket flew above the palm trees to arrive at their launch location at the U.S. Army's Reagan test site at Kwajalein Atoll. Kwajalein, located midway between Hawaii and Australia, is one of the world's largest atolls -- coral islands with lagoons in the middle. The mission is scheduled to launch June 13 no earlier than 8:30 a.m. PDT (11:30 a.m. EDT).

Currently, NuSTAR is tucked into the top of the rocket, a Pegasus XL from Orbital Sciences Corporation, which is strapped to the bottom of a carrier plane, the L-1011 "Stargazer," also from Orbital.

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r193/Waspie_Dwarf/51c2dcfe.jpg

About an hour before launch, NuSTAR and its rocket will be flown out over the Pacific Ocean and dropped. Five seconds later, the rocket will ignite and boost NuSTAR into its final orbit around Earth's equator. A video showing a previous Pegasus launch is online at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?collection_id=80521 .

Live launch commentary and coverage will be broadcast online beginning at 7 a.m. PDT (10 a.m. EDT) at http://www.nasa.gov, http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

Launch management and government oversight for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/ .

Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

2012-160

Source