Oct. 2, 2007

NASA Restarts Columbia Study of Black Holes
Project to energize physics department

NASA has green-lighted the launch of telescopes capable of detecting black holes in the universe with 1,000 times the sensitivity of previous missions. The initiative, housed in Columbia University's Department of Physics, is known as Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR).

A rendering of ‘Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array’ (NuSTAR) project

Begun in 2005, NASA cancelled NuSTAR shortly thereafter due to changing budget priorities. Now, scientists aim to launch the telescopes into space in a low Earth orbit in 2011.

NASA’s renewed commitment to NuSTAR is great news to Columbia Pupin Professor of Physics Charles Hailey, whose research group has led the development of focusing hard X-ray optics for astronomers for more than a decade. Hard X-rays are highly penetrating and thus allow scientists to peer deeply into regions obscured by gas and dust where black holes are hiding, such as the centers of galaxies both near and far.

Hailey initiated the NuSTAR project, along with Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology.

NASA’s newest launch date decision is a boon for physics at Columbia, Hailey said.

“This is a great triumph for Columbia and the department,” he said. “This $105 million mission will require the hiring of some 20 people including undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs and technicians, and will completely occupy almost every available square foot of the Cyclotron building at the Nevis laboratory, along with my lab space here on campus in Pupin. It will be a busy and exciting four years.”

Nevis Laboratories is Columbia’s primary center for high-energy experimental particle, nuclear physics and astrophysics research.

The optics in the project were first demonstrated on an earlier NASA project, the High Energy Focusing Telescope (HEFT), a balloon-borne experiment conducted by CalTech and Columbia. The three new telescopes to be built for NuSTAR are larger versions of those Columbia provided for HEFT, and which successfully flew two years ago.

“NuSTAR is truly an evolution of Columbia's research and development on the optics,” Hailey said. “The work progressed from the laboratory, to the successful flight of telescopes on HEFT, to the bigger and more powerful optics of the NuSTAR project.”