The International Space Station. Credit: NASA
Showing posts with label NUSTAR SPACECRAFT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NUSTAR SPACECRAFT. Show all posts

Monday, June 11, 2012

NUSTAR, GALACTIC EXPLORER



FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT ARMED WITH SCIENCE
This photo shows the Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket with the NuSTAR spacecraft after attachment to the L-1011 carrier aircraft known as "Stargazer." Image credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB 

Written on JUNE 10, 2012 AT 7:54 AM by JTOZER
NuStar Headed To The Stars
 NASA‘s Nuclear Spectroscopic Teelscope 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).
The 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.  Launch management and government oversight for the mission is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.



Sunday, June 3, 2012

NASA'S PEGASUS


FROM:  NASA
Pegasus Fairing Removed
Orbital Sciences’ Pegasus XL rocket is viewed over the Pegasus payload fairing, positioned part in and part out of the environmental enclosure in Orbital’s hangar on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Half of the Pegasus fairing has been removed from around NASA’s NuSTAR spacecraft. Access to the spacecraft is needed for compatibility testing to verify communication with a tracking station in Hawaii.
Image credit: NASA/Randy Beaudoin, VAFB
April 10, 2012