The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) Mission
Creators: name: Harrison, Fiona A.
name: Craig, William W.
name: Christensen, Finn E.
name: Hailey, Charles J.
name: Zhang, Will W.
name: Boggs, Steven E.
name: Stern, Daniel
name: Cook, W. Rick
name: Forster, Karl
name: Giommi, Paolo
name: Grefenstette, Brian W.
name: Kim, Yunjin
name: Kitaguchi, Takao
name: Koglin, Jason E
name: Madsen, Kristin K.
name: Mao, Peter H.
name: Miyasaka, Hiromasa
name: Mori, Kaya
name: Perri, Matteo
name: Pivovaroff, Michael J.
name: Puccetti, Simonetta
name: Rana, Vikram R.
name: Westergaard, Niels J.
name: Willis, Jason
name: Zoglauer, Andreas
name: An, Hongjun
name: Bachetti, Matteo
name: Barriere, Nicolas M.
name: Bellm, Eric C.
name: Bhalerao, Varun
name: Brejnholt, Nicolai F.
name: Fuerst, Felix
name: Liebe, Carl C.
name: Markwardt, Craig B.
name: Nynka, Melania
name: Vogel, Julia K.
name: Walton, Dominic J.
name: Wik, Daniel R.
name: Alexander, David M.
name: Cominsky, Lynn R.
name: Hornschemeier, Ann E.
name: Hornstrup, Allan
name: Kaspi, Victoria M.
name: Madejski, Greg M.
name: Matt, Giorgio
name: Molendi, Silvano
name: Smith, David M.
name: Tomsick, John A.
name: Ajello, Marco
name: Ballantyne, David R.
name: Balokovic, Mislav
name: Barret, Diddier
name: Bauer, Franz E.
name: Blandford, Roger D.
name: Brandt, W. Niel
name: Brenneman, Laura W.
name: Chiang, James
name: Chakrabarty, Deepto
name: Chenevez, Jerome
name: Comastri, Andrea
name: Elvis, Martin
name: Fabian, Andrew C.
name: Farrah, Duncan
name: Fryer, Chris L.
name: Gotthelf, Eric V.
name: Grindlay, Jonathan E.
name: Helfand, David J.
name: Krivonos, Roman
name: Meier, David L.
name: Miller, Jon M.
name: Natalucci, Lorenzo
name: Ogle, Patrick
name: Ofek, Eran O.
name: Ptak, Andrew
name: Reynolds, Stephen P.
name: Rigby, Jand R.
name: Tagliaferri, Gianpiero
name: Thorsett, Stephen E.
name: Treister, Ezequiel
name: Urry, C. Megan
Publisher: name: arXiv
Year: 2013
Subjects: subject: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
subject: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE)
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences

description: The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission, launched on 13 June 2012, is the first focusing high-energy X-ray telescope in orbit. NuSTAR operates in the band from 3 -- 79 keV, extending the sensitivity of focusing far beyond the ~10 keV high-energy cutoff achieved by all previous X-ray satellites. The inherently low-background associated with concentrating the X-ray light enables NuSTAR to probe the hard X-ray sky with a more than one-hundred-fold improvement in sensitivity over the collimated or coded-mask instruments that have operated in this bandpass. Using its unprecedented combination of sensitivity, spatial and spectral resolution, NuSTAR will pursue five primary scientific objectives, and will also undertake a broad program of targeted observations. The observatory consists of two co-aligned grazing-incidence X-ray telescopes pointed at celestial targets by a three-axis stabilized spacecraft. Deployed into a 600 km, near-circular, 6degree inclination orbit, the Observatory has now completed commissioning, and is performing consistent with pre-launch expectations. NuSTAR is now executing its primary science mission, and with an expected orbit lifetime of ten years, we anticipate proposing a guest investigator program, to begin in Fall 2014.
description: 20 pages, 12 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journal