LASP Public Lecture: How CU students operate NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE)

In this talk, a panel of LASP student and staff mission operators will discuss their role in IXPE’s mission to measure cosmic X-rays from astronomical objects like nebulae, quasars and black holes as well as discuss LASP’s Mission Operations Center and the unique role that CU students play to control the spacecraft and instruments.

Launched on Dec. 9, 2021, IXPE is a NASA space observatory with three telescopes that measure the polarization (oscillation in one direction) of cosmic X-rays from exotic astronomical objects. IXPE will map the magnetic fields of super-massive black holes, nebulae, neutron stars, quasars, pulsars, and more to advance scientific understanding of X-ray production and the high-temperature environments in which they are created.