In search of distant black holes

In search of distant black holes, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) high-energy X-ray telescope spacecraft is on a mission to map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants studying the origins of cosmic rays and the extreme physics around collapsed stars.

Scheduled to launch June 13, NuStar will peer into space, conducting a census of black holes, and returning unprecedented high-resolution images of the mysterious compact masses. (Editors' note, June 13 at 11:25 a.m. PT: NuStar did indeed launch on schedule.)

NuStar has a 10-meter mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules, seen on the right, from the detectors in the focal plane on the left.