The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR)

Understand

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a NASA Small Explorer mission that will carry the first focusing hard X-ray (5 -- 80 keV) telescope to orbit.

• NuSTAR will offer a factor 50 -- 100 sensitivity improvement compared to previous collimated or coded mask imagers that have operated in this energy band.
• In addition, NuSTAR provides sub-arcminute imaging with good spectral resolution over a 12-arcminute field of view.
• After launch, NuSTAR will carry out a two-year primary science mission that focuses on four key programs: studying the evolution of massive black holes through surveys carried out in fields with excellent multiwavelength coverage, understanding the population of compact objects and the nature of the massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, constraining explosion dynamics and nucleosynthesis in supernovae, and probing the nature of particle acceleration in relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei.