After years of planning and evaluation of proposals, NASA announced in February the main investigations on which the project will focus. Scientists will use the instrument to investigate objects such as distant galaxies powered by supermassive black holes at their centers, remnants of stars that have exploded as supernovae, and many other phenomena at the extremes of mass and energy. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland is in charge of the mission as a whole, including the spacecraft that will carry the telescope. We have a complete prototype of the instrument that we've tested recently at SLAC, but now we have to bear down and do the serious engineering work needed for a space-based application. It will also be able to measure the energy of gamma rays over an unprecedented range.
Pulsars are the collapsed cores of massive stars left behind after supernova explosions.
Spinning rapidly in deep space, a pulsar sends flashes of radiation sweeping across Earth like the beam of a lighthouse. The primary instrument is an array of towers composed of thin lead foil interleaved with thin silicon detectors, followed by a matrix of scintillation crystals. Joining Johnson on the project are adjunct professor of physics Hartmut Sadrozinski, several postdoctoral researchers, and a cadre of highly skilled engineers and technicians. Several UCSC undergraduates are also involved in the project.