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NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is a space-based X-ray telescope that will use a Wolter telescope, a telescope for X-rays using only grazing incidence optics. It is to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources; astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior.
NuSTAR is especially used for nuclear spectroscopy, the quantitative study of the energy spectra of gamma-ray sources, both nuclear laboratory geochemical, and astrophysical, and will operate in the range of 5 to 80 keV; in physics, the electron volt is a unit of energy equal to approximately 1.602x10-19 joule (J).
It is the eleventh mission of the NASA Small Explorer satellite program (SMEX-11), an effort to fund space exploration missions that cost no more than $120 million by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. It is the first space-based direct-imaging X-ray telescope (XRT), a telescope that is designed to observe remote objects in the X-ray spectrum, at energies beyond those of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a space telescope launched in STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999, and XMM-Newton (X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission-Newton), an orbiting observatory launched by ESA in December 1999 on an Ariane 5 rocket. It was successfully launched on June 13, 2012, having previously been delayed from March 21 due to software issues with the launch vehicle.
Its primary scientific goals are to conduct a deep survey for black holes a billion times more massive than the sun, understand how particles are accelerated to within a fraction of a percent below the speed of light oin active galaxies—active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the centre of a galaxy that has a much higher than normal luminosity over at least some portion, and possibly all, of the electromagnetic spectrum—and understand how the elements are created in the explosions of massive stars by imaging the remains, which are called supernova remnants (SNR), the structure resulting from the explosion of a star in a supernova.
NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is a space-based X-ray telescope that will use a Wolter telescope, a telescope for X-rays using only grazing incidence optics. It is to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources; astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior.
NuSTAR’s predecessor, the High Energy Focusing Telescope (HEFT), was a balloon-borne version that carried telescopes and detectors constructed using similar technologies. In February 2003, NASA issued an Explorer Program Announcement of Opportunity. In response, NuSTAR was submitted to NASA in May, as one of the 36 mission proposals vying to be the tenth and eleventh Small Explorer missions. In November, NASA selected NuSTAR and four other proposals for a five-month implementation feasibility study.
In January 2005, NASA selected NuSTAR for flight pending a one-year feasibility study. The program was cancelled in February 2006 as a result of cuts to science in NASA’s 2006 budget, On September 21, 2007, it was announced that the program has been restarted, with an expected launch in August 2011, though this was later delayed to June 2012.
The principal investigator is Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Other major partners include the: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States; University of California at Berkeley (also referred to as UC Berkeley, California, or simply Cal), a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States; Danish Technical University (DTU), a university just north of Copenhagen, Denmark; Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, an American private Ivy League research university located in New York City, New York, United States; Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), a major space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA’s first space flight center; Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, an American private research university located in Stanford, California on an 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) campus near Palo Alto; University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, a public, collegiate university (one of ten campuses in the University of California); Sonoma State University, also known as SSU, Sonoma State, and Sonoma, a public university which is part of the California State University (CSU) system; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC), founded by the University of California in 1952; and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), a government agency established in 1988 to fund, regulate and coordinate space exploration activities in Italy.
NuSTAR’s major industrial partners include Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC, though commonly referred to as Orbital), an American company which specialized in the manufacturing and launch of satellites, and Alliant Techsystems Inc., most commonly known by its ticker symbol, NYSE: ATK, one of the largest aerospace and defense companies in the United States with more than 18,000 employees in 22 states, Puerto Rico and internationally, and 2010 revenues in excess of an estimated US$4.8 billion; the one referred is the one located at Goleta, a city in southern Santa Barbara, California, USA.
NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is a space-based X-ray telescope that will use a Wolter telescope, a telescope for X-rays using only grazing incidence optics. It is to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources; astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior.
NuSTAR employs two grazing incidence focusing optics each of which consists of 133 concentric shells. The particular innovation enabling NuSTAR is that the optics are coated with depth-graded multilayers (optimized for broadband response by alternating atomically thin layers of a high-density and low-density material); with NuSTAR’s choice of Pt/SiC and W/Si multilayers, this enables reflectivity up to 79 keV (the platinum K-edge energy; K-edge describes a sudden increase in the attenuation coefficient of photons occurring at a photon energy just above the binding energy of the K shell electron of the atoms interacting with the photons).
The optics are produced at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), a major NASA space research laboratory established on May 1, 1959 as NASA’s first space flight center. It is made by heating thin (210 µm) sheets of flexible glass in an oven so that they slump over precision-polished cylindrical quartz mandrels of the appropriate radius; mandrels (arbors) is an object used to shape machined work, a tool component that grips or clamps materials to be machined, or a tool component that can be used to grip other moving tool components. The coatings, or a covering that is applied to the surface of an object, usually referred to as the “substrate,” are applied by a group at the Danish Technical University, often simply referred to as DTU, a university just north of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The shells are then assembled, at the Nevis Laboratories, a research center owned and operated by Columbia University, using graphite spacers machined to constrain the glass to the conical shape, and held together by epoxy. There are 4,680 mirror segments in total (the 65 inner shells each comprise six segments and the 65 outer shells twelve; there are upper and lower segments to each shell, and there are two telescopes), there are five spacers per segment. Since the epoxy takes 24 hours to cure, one shall is assembled per day—it takes four months to build up one optic.
The expected point spread function for the flight mirrors is 43 arc-seconds, giving a spot size of about two millimeters at the focal plane; this is unprecedentedly good resolution for refocusing hard X-ray optics, though up to two orders of magnitude worse than the best resolution achieved at longer wavelengths by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a space telescope launched on STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999.
The optics have a 10.15-metre focal length, and so are held at the end of a long deployable mast, a structure that can change shape so as to significantly change units size; a laser metrology system is used to determine the exact relative positions of the optics and the focal plane at all time, so that each detected photon can be mapped back to the correct point on the sky even if the optics and the focal plane move relative to one another during an exposure.
NuSTAR (the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) is a space-based X-ray telescope that will use a Wolter telescope, a telescope for X-rays using only grazing incidence optics. It is to focus high energy X-rays from astrophysical sources; astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with…
