Mehrub Ul Haque

We're about to get a new perspective on some of the most extreme objects in the universe. In the early morning hours Thursday, NASA launched its Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission, or IXPE, to measure X-rays released by black holes and neutron stars. The satellite successfully launched at 1 a.m. ET Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft, which is the collaborative effort of NASA and the Italian Space Agency, carries three telescopes. While IXPE isn't as big as NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, it is the first space observatory of its kind. The satellite will be able to see an often overlooked aspect of cosmic ray sources called polarization.