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NASA’s New IXPE Mission Starts Science Operations – Can It Be Achieving?


From NASA

Cassiopeia A Supernova Ruins
Cassiopeia Remnants of a supernova.
Credit: NASA / CXC / STAR

NASA’s newest X-ray eyes are open and ready to explore!

Having spent just over a month in space, the Imaging X-Ray Polarizer Explorer (IXPE) is active and has studied some of the hottest, most energetic objects in the universe.

A joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency, IXPE was the first space observatory dedicated to studying the polarization of X-rays coming from objects such as exploding stars and black holes. Polarization describes how X-ray light is oriented as it travels through space.

“The beginning of IXPE’s scientific observations marks a new chapter for ray astronomy,” said Martin Weisskopf, mission principal investigator at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. X. “One thing is for sure: we can expect the unexpected.”

IXPE launched on December 9 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit 370 miles (600 km) above Earth’s equator. The observatory’s boom, which provides the distance needed to focus X-rays on its detectors, was successfully deployed on December 15. The IXPE team spent the next three weeks testing its viability. maneuvering and pointing capabilities of the observatory as well as the alignment of the telescopes.

During these tests, the team pointed IXPE at two bright calibration targets: 1ES 1959 + 650, a galactic core powered by a black hole with space-fired jets; and SMC X-1, a rotating dead star, or pulsar. The brightness of these two sources makes it easy for the IXPE team to see where the X-rays are falling on IXPE’s polarization-sensitive detectors and make small adjustments to the telescope’s alignment.

What’s next for IXPE?

On January 11, IXPE began observing its first official scientific target – Cassiopeia A, or Cas A – the remains of a massive star that blew up on its own in a supernova some 350 years ago. in our Milky Way. Supernovas are filled with magnetic energy and accelerate particles to near the speed of light, making them laboratories for studying extreme physics in space.

IXPE will provide detailed information about the magnetic structure of Cas A that cannot be observed in other ways. By studying the polarization of an X-ray, scientists can work out the detailed structure of its magnetic field and the locations at which these particles accelerate.

IXPE’s observations of Cas A will last approximately three weeks.

“Measurement of X-ray polarization is not simple,” says Weisskopf. “You have to collect a lot of light, and unpolarized light behaves like background noise. It may take a while for the signal to be polarized.”

More about Mission IXPE

IXPE transmits scientific data several times a day to a ground station operated by the Italian Space Agency in Malindi, Kenya. The data transmitted from the Malindi station to IXPE’s Mission Operations Center at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and then to IXPE’s Science Operations Center at NASA Marshall for processing and analysis. IXPE science data will be made available to the public from the High Energy Astrophysical Science Research Center at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The Marshall Science Operations team also coordinates with the mission operations team at LASP to schedule science observations. The mission plans to observe more than 30 planned targets in its first year. The mission will study distant supermassive black holes whose energetic particle jets light up their host galaxies. IXPE will also probe the space-time twisting around stellar-mass black holes and measure their rotation. Other planned targets include different types of neutron stars, such as pulsars and magnetars. The team also spent about a month observing other interesting objects that might appear in the sky or suddenly light up.

IXPE is a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency with scientific partners and collaborators in 12 countries. Ball Aerospace, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, manages the spacecraft’s operations.



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