NASA's NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array) space telescope was successfully launched into space on Wednesday. Thus began his mission to unveil the secrets of black holes and other exotic objects in the universe.
NuSTAR will use a unique array of instruments to see the cosmos's high-energy X-ray light through clouds of gas and dust . In this way, it is expected to identify as many unknown black holes in the Milky Way as those hidden in distant galaxies.
"We were eager to launch this novel X-ray observatory," explained Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division. "With its unprecedented spatial and spectral resolution, in the hitherto little-explored region of rays X "hard" of the electromagnetic spectrum, NuSTAR will open a new window to the universe and provide complementary data to other large missions such as Fermi, Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer ", adds the researcher.
The new telescope has a 10 meter long mast that separates the two optical modules – identical, to increase sensitivity – of the detectors in the focal plane. In addition to black holes, the telescope will be used to study the remnants of supernova explosions and galaxy clusters.
