SpaceX has successfully completed its 28th launch this year. Last year’s record was broken – 26 launches. Roscosmos has made half the number of launches, although during the Soviet era there were more than a hundred of them a year. In total, this is the 131st flight of the Falcon 9 into space.
In the next launch, made by Elon Musk’s company, there is one more event that deserves mention. The reusable first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which took part in the acceleration of the spacecraft, was used for the fifth time!
The launch was carried out from the site at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, the takeoff, as usual, was broadcast live.
The IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) X-ray telescope went into space. It is about the size of an ordinary refrigerator, the mission of this “refrigerator” is to study the physics of the most dynamic objects in the Universe: black holes and neutron stars. Astronomers hope that the new telescope will become a reliable and highly accurate instrument and will help solve some of the mysteries of the universe.
The total cost of the mission, in which Italian and American astrophysicists are involved, is over $ 200 million.
IXPE is not one but three of the same telescopes and will study the polarization of light from some of the most impressive cosmic sources in the universe. Astrophysicists will be able to refine the structure of these objects and study the mechanisms that activate them.
IXPE will join the ranks of other NASA research vehicles that are used to observe X-rays, notably the Chandra Space Telescope. Chandra produces images – beautiful pictures of X-ray sources, while IXPE will focus exclusively on light polarimetry.
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