NuSTAR News Conference May 30

The above image gives a overview of the Pegasus XL NuSTAR mission profile. Image Credit: NASA

As we recently reported, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission is on schedule for a June 13th launch.  On that date, no earlier than 11:30 AM EDT / 8:30 AM PDT, NuSTAR will launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The spacecraft will lift off on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL launch vehicle, released from an aircraft flying south of Kwajalein.

In a couple of days, we will learn a lot more about the mission. NASA will hold a news conference on Wednesday, May 30 at 1 PM EDT / 10 AM PDT to discuss NuSTAR. The event will be at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on NASA's website. In addition, the event will be carried live on Ustream, with a moderated chat available, at www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 . You can ask question via Twitter using the hashtag #asknasa.

NuSTAR will observe some of the hottest, densest and most energetic objects in the universe, including black holes, their high-speed particle jets, ultra-dense neutron stars, supernova remnants and our sun. It will observe high-energy X-rays with much greater sensitivity and clarity than any mission flown to date. Among its several goals, NuSTAR will address the puzzle of how black holes and galaxies evolve together over time.

The news conference participants are:

— Paul Hertz, Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington

— Fiona Harrison, NuSTAR principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California

— Daniel Stern, NuSTAR project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena

— Yunjin Kim, NuSTAR project manager at JPL

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: www.nasa.gov/ntv .

And now, the mission particulars...

NuSTAR is a Small Explorer mission led Caltech and managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Virginia. Its instrument was built by a consortium including Caltech; JPL; the University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University, New York; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; the Danish Technical University in Denmark; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California; and ATK Aerospace Systems, Goleta, California. NuSTAR will be operated by UC Berkeley, with the Italian Space Agency providing its equatorial ground station located at Malindi, Kenya. The mission's outreach program is based at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif. NASA's Explorer Program is managed by Goddard. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.

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

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