Environmental

NASA March 13 NuSTAR Media Briefing Postponed


PASADENA, Calif.–(ENEWSPF) — The Tuesday, March 13, media briefing to  discuss the upcoming launch of the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array  (NuSTAR) has been postponed. The spacecraft will lift off on an Orbital Sciences  Pegasus XL rocket, which will be released from an aircraft originating from the  Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
The mission’s Flight Readiness Review (FRR) is being rescheduled  for no earlier than Thursday, March 15, to allow time for a review of data and  simulations to qualify software associated with a new Pegasus flight computer.
A revised launch date will be set at the FRR. A pre-launch media  briefing will be rescheduled after the FRR is complete.
NuSTAR will use advanced optics and detectors, allowing  astronomers to observe the high-energy X-ray sky with much greater sensitivity  and clarity than any mission flown before. The mission will advance our  understanding of how structures in the universe form and evolve. It will  observe some of the hottest, densest and most energetic objects in the  universe, including black holes, their high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense  neutron stars, supernova remnants and our sun.
NuSTAR  is a Small Explorer mission led by the California Institute of Technology and managed  by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Pasadena, Calif., for NASA’s  Science Mission Directorate. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences  Corporation, Dulles, Va. Its instrument was built by a consortium including  Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New  York; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Danish  Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,  Calif.; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, Calif. NuSTAR  will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its  equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission’s outreach  program is based at Sonoma State University, Calif. NASA’s Explorer Program is  managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.


ARCHIVES