NASA just released the first science image from its new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). James Webb isn’t the only new space observatory ready to perform cutting-edge science in 2022. The development of the Micro-X payload was supported by NASA’s Astrophysics Division.Cassiopeia A seen in IXPE data (magenta) overlayed on Chandra imagery (blue). NASA’s Heliophysics Division manages the sounding rocket program for the agency. NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program is conducted at the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Virginia, which is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. We’re hoping to get it back, refurbish it, and fly it again,” Figueroa-Feliciano said.
![cassiopeia a cassiopeia a](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZOsRK1ZxFZs/maxresdefault.jpg)
“This project has potential to do interesting science over several flights. If all goes as planned, Micro-X will once again descend safely to the ground for recovery. “Our science depends on measuring the energy of X-rays with exquisite resolution.”
![cassiopeia a cassiopeia a](http://www.dainichi.to/masaru/computer/cassiopeia.gif)
“This factor of two is very significant,” Figueroa-Feliciano said. The detectors worked, but it was unable to point accurately at Cas A during its observation period.įor the upcoming re-flight, Figueroa-Feliciano and his team have increased Micro-X’s resolution two-fold. Micro-X first launched July 23, 2018, but the attitude control system on the rocket malfunctioned. One of Micro-X’s goals is to test the new detector technologies for future missions that may use them, like the ESA-led (European Space Agency) ATHENA mission. Sounding rockets are how many cutting-edge technologies make their first trips to space. “Micro-X has a resolution about 50 times higher than existing orbiting observatories,” Figueroa-Feliciano said. Though many missions have observed Cas A, the new detectors on Micro-X will see it like never before. “Like forensic evidence, it gives us clues of how the death of the star came about.” “The X-ray energy spectrum is like a fingerprint revealing the composition, history, and state of the gas and ejecta from the explosion,” Figueroa-Feliciano said. Cosmic X-rays are absorbed by our atmosphere and so are only detectable from space. Once in space, Micro-X will have about five minutes to observe Cas A, focusing on its X-ray light. Sounding rockets make brief, 15-minute forays into space before falling back to the ground. To observe Cas A, Micro-X will launch aboard a sounding rocket. “The Sun and its 14 closest stars would all fit inside the Cas A supernova remnant,” said Enectali Figueroa-Feliciano, a professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University in Illinois and principal investigator for the Micro-X mission. Like scattered shrapnel, material from the explosion spread across some 13 light-years of space. It wasn’t discovered until 1948, and since then Cas A has become one of the most well-studied objects in the night sky. The eruption’s light first reached Earth around 1680, though there are no historical reports of it at the time.
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There, a massive bubble of radiant material known as Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, marks the site of a brilliant stellar death. The mission’s target of study is some 11,000 light-years away from Earth, off the edge of the W-shaped constellation known as Cassiopeia. 21 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The High-Resolution Microcalorimeter X-ray Imaging, or Micro-X, experiment will launch Aug. A NASA-funded sounding rocket mission will observe the remnants of an exploded star, uncovering new details about the eruption event while testing X-ray detector technologies for future missions.