The US aerospace agency NASA launched on Thursday (9) the exploratory mission of polarimetry of x-ray images (IXPE, its acronym in English). The mission is the result of a collaborative effort with the Italian space agency ASI and 12 other international entities.
The goal of IXPE is to observe x-ray polarization in supernovae, super massive black holes and high-energy objects scattered throughout the universe.
The launch was carried out from the Kennedy Space Center, in the state of Florida, in the United States. “Together with our partners in Italy and around the world, we have added a new observatory to our fleet that will shape our understanding of the universe for years to come. Every NASA aircraft is carefully chosen for observations that will enable new sciences, and the IXPE will show us the violent universe around us like we’ve never seen before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Science Missions Directory Administrator.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket was responsible for putting the IXPE into orbit. The module carries three special telescopes with polarimetric detectors – a property that makes it possible to identify details in the light spectrum that can reveal the origin of the electromagnetic emission. IXPE is considered a successor to other projects to capture polarization x-rays, such as the Chandra observatory, NASA’s main x-ray telescope.
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