Credit: ISAS/JAXA & NASA
Poised
The image above shows the Uchinoura Space Center, Uchinoura, Kagoshima prefecture, Japan, where the M-V Launch Vehicle Flight #6 is ready to launch. Launch time is Saturday, July 9 at 11:30pm EDT (the original launch attempt on Tues, July 5th at 11:30pm EDT was scrubbed due to weather). M-V-6 carries the Astro-E2 X-ray satellite observatory, an X-ray observatory built as a collaboration between Japan's Institute for Space and Astronautical Science, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA) and NASA. Astro-E2 carries aboard a revolutionary X-ray instrument, the X-ray Spectrometer (XRS). The XRS obtains extremely high resolution X-ray spectra of cosmic X-ray sources by measuring extremely small changes in detector temperature produced when X-rays are absorbed by the detector. Astro-E2 also includes an X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS) and a Hard X-ray Detector (HXD), and uses thin-foil X-ray mirrors to provide a large X-ray collecting area with sufficient spatial resolution. The launch will be webcast by ISAS - see the "live" link at that bottom of the page.
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Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Tuesday, 27-Feb-2024 10:13:21 EST
