Space telescope to study “extreme objects”

During its two-year mission, the IXPE space telescope will examine X-ray emissions from objects such as supermassive black holes.

To say that the universe still holds many secrets is an understatement. And so the search continues quickly. With the IXPE space telescope from the US and Italian space agencies NASA and ASI, whose two-year mission began last week, scientists hope to learn more about the most extreme objects in the universe.

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high energy

The space telescope was launched on December 9 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Less than an hour later, at an altitude of about 600 km, the new satellite slid 330 kg into Earth orbit.

IXPE space telescope, for x-ray imaging explorer, It was designed to study extremely high energy objects. Think of black holes (supermassive) and neutron stars as magnetars, but also pulsars, supernova remnants, and quasars.

X ray

IXPE does this by scanning the universe for polarized X-rays emitted by these extreme objects. For this purpose, the satellite is equipped with three identical X-ray telescopes. The two-year mission is the first NASA mission to focus entirely on measuring polarized X-rays.

If all goes according to plan, IXPE will make the first real measurements at the beginning of January 2022.

Resources: NASA

Photo: NASA. NASA/Joel Kosky