NuSTAR

Explorer 93, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, SMEX-11

Mission Profile

NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, Explorer 93) is NASA's first focusing hard X-ray telescope in space, launched on 13 June 2012 aboard a Pegasus XL rocket air-launched from a Stargazer aircraft over the central Pacific. The telescope uses grazing-incidence optics on a 10-meter mast to focus X-rays between 3 and 79 keV — energies far higher than any previous focusing telescope — onto a pair of solid-state detectors at the focal plane. NuSTAR has studied the hard X-ray emission from black hole accretion disks, mapped radioactive titanium-44 in young supernova remnants tracing the explosive dynamics of stellar explosions, and discovered a population of previously unknown hard X-ray sources in the Galactic Center. The mission continues operating more than a decade past launch with no degradation in detector performance.