The U.S. space agency has selected the Orbital Sciences Corp. to launch the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, high energy X-ray telescope.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the spacecraft is to be launched by the Dulles, Va., corporation in 2011 from the Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site located on the Pacific Ocean's Kwajalein Atoll.
NASA said the total cost of the NuSTAR launch services is approximately $36 million dollars. NuSTAR is expected to become the first focusing, high energy X-ray telescope in orbit.
It will search for black holes, map radioactive material in young supernovae remnants and study the origins of cosmic rays and the extreme physics around collapsed stars.
The California Institute of Technology leads the mission, which NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages.
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