April 5, 2013
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Neutron-star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which NASA recently selected as its next Explorer Mission of Opportunity, will gather scientific data revealing the physics of the densest matter allowed in nature, and—from the same platform—will demonstrate a groundbreaking navigation technology that could revolutionize the agency's ability to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and beyond.
The multi-purpose mission, also known as NICER/SEXTANT (Station Explorer for X-ray Timing and Navigation Technology), consists of 56 X-ray telescopes in a compact bundle, their associated silicon detectors, and a number of other advanced technologies.
The X-ray instrument is roughly the size of a typical college dormitory refrigerator and will be deployed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2017 as an external attached payload on one of the ISS ExPRESS Logistics Carriers. Both NASA's Science Mission Directorate's Explorers Program and the Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Development Program are contributing to the mission's development.
"NICER/SEXTANT represents the quintessential cross-cutting mission," said Principal Investigator
, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
, who is leading NICER/SEXTANT's development. "Our technology demonstration will establish the viability of spacecraft navigation using neutron stars, while the same instrument gives scientists an important new tool with which to better understand these stars that can serve as navigation beacons."
In addition to NASA Goddard scientists and engineers, the mission team includes the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and commercial partners, who are providing spaceflight hardware. The Naval Research Laboratory and universities across
the United States
, as well as in
, are providing science expertise. The Japanese HII-B Transfer Vehicle (HTV) or the Dragon, a carrier now being developed by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), of
, is expected to deliver the payload to the Station, Gendreau said.
NICER/SEXTANT's primary objective is to learn more about the interior composition of neutron stars, the remnants of massive stars that, after exhausting their nuclear fuel, exploded and collapsed into super-dense spheres about the size of
New York City
. Their intense gravity crushes an astonishing amount of matter — often more than 1.4 times the content of the sun or at least 460,000 Earths — into these city-sized balls, creating the densest objects known in the universe. Just one teaspoonful of neutron-star matter would weigh a billion tons on Earth.
"We have no way of creating or studying this extraordinary material in any laboratory," said
, a Goddard scientist serving as the deputy principal investigator on the mission. "There are many theories about what it is and how it behaves, but the only way to test our models and understand what happens to matter under such incredible pressures is to study neutron stars. NICER/SEXTANT will reveal the nature of ultra-dense matter in these stars and the physics that governs it."
Although the nuclear-fusion fires that sustained their parent stars are extinguished, neutron stars still shine with heat left over from their explosive formation, and from radiation generated by their magnetic fields that became intensely concentrated as the core collapsed.