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Inside NuSTAR's Nose Cone

March 2, 2012
A spacecraft technician is performing closeout work inside the fairing that will be installed around NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft in a processing facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A spacecraft technician is performing closeout work inside the fairing that will be installed around NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft in a processing facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The fairing will protect the spacecraft from the heat and aerodynamic pressure generated during ascent to orbit aboard an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket. After processing of the rocket and spacecraft are complete, they will be flown on Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft from Vandenberg to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on the Pacific Ocean¹s Kwajalein Atoll for launch. The high-energy X-ray telescope will conduct a census of black holes, map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants, and study the origins of cosmic rays and the extreme physics around collapsed stars.

For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov/nustar and http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/.

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