NASA's NuSTAR Ships to Vandenberg for March 14 Launch

[KSC News Center <ksc@mediaservices.nasa.gov>]

Jan. 25, 2012

George H. Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
george.h.diller@nasa.gov

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

Trent J. Perrotto
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0321
trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov

RELEASE: 04-12

NASA'S NUSTAR SHIPS TO VANDENBERG FOR MARCH 14 LAUNCH

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or 
NuSTAR, shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Tuesday, to 
be mated to its Pegasus launch vehicle. The observatory will detect 
X-rays from objects ranging from our sun to giant black holes 
billions of light-years away. It is scheduled to launch March 14 from 
an aircraft operating out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

"The NuSTAR mission is unique because it will be the first NASA 
mission to focus X-rays in the high-energy range, creating the most 
detailed images ever taken in this slice of the electromagnetic 
spectrum," said Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal investigator 
at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. 

The observatory shipped from Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, 
Va., where the spacecraft and science instrument were integrated. It 
is scheduled to arrive at Vandenberg on Jan. 27, where it will be 
mated to the Pegasus, also built by Orbital, on Feb. 17.

The mission will be launched from the L-1011 "Stargazer" aircraft, 
which will take off near the equator from Kwajalein Atoll in the 
Pacific. NuSTAR and its Pegasus will fly from Vandenberg to Kwajalein 
attached to the underside of the L-1011, and are scheduled to arrive 
on March 7.

On launch day, after the airplane arrives at the planned drop site 
over the ocean, the Pegaus will drop from the L-1011 and carry NuSTAR 
to an orbit around Earth.

"NuSTAR is an engineering achievement, incorporating state-of-the-art 
high-energy X-ray mirrors and detectors that will enable years of 
astronomical discovery," said Yunjin Kim, the mission's project 
manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. 

NuSTAR's advanced telescope consists of two sets of 133 concentric 
shells of mirrors, which were shaped from flexible glass similar to 
that found in laptop screens. Because X-rays require large focusing 
distances, or focal lengths, the telescope has a lengthy 33-foot 
(10-meter) mast, which will unfold a week after launch. 

These and other advances in technology will enable NuSTAR to explore 
the cosmic world of high-energy X-rays with much improved sensitivity 
and resolution over previous missions. During its two-year primary 
mission, NuSTAR will map the celestial sky in X-rays, surveying black 
holes, mapping supernova remnants, and studying particle jets 
travelling away from black holes near the speed of light. 

NuSTAR also will probe the sun, looking for microflares theorized to 
be on the surface that could explain how the sun's million-degree 
corona, or atmosphere, is heated. It will even test a theory of dark 
matter, the mysterious substance making up about one-quarter of our 
universe, by searching the sun for evidence of a hypothesized dark 
matter particle.

"NuSTAR will provide an unprecedented capability to discover and study 
some of the most exotic objects in the universe, from the corpses of 
exploded stars in the Milky Way to supermassive black holes residing 
in the hearts of distant galaxies," said Lou Kaluzienski, NuSTAR 
program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 

NuSTAR is a small-explorer mission managed by JPL for NASA's Science 
Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences 
Corporation. Its instrument was built by a consortium including 
Caltech, JPL, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., NASA's Goddard 
Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Danish Technical 
University in Denmark, the University of California, Berkeley, and 
ATK-Goleta. NuSTAR will be operated by U.C. Berkeley, with the 
Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located 
at Malindi, Kenya. 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. 

	
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