NASA and JAXA are collaborating on a new satellite known as X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) mission, which is pronounced as ‘Crism’.
On board is the Resolve instrument, which can split the high energy light into various frequency bands, which is the X-ray equivalent of a rainbow seen in optical frequencies. The instrument will allow scientists to derive insights about the most exotic objects in the known universe.
Resolve is a microcalorimeter spectrometer, that needs to be cooled down to nearly absolute zero to measure the tiny temperature fluctuations when X-rays strike the detector. NASA’s XRISM principal investigator Richard Kelleysays, “Resolve will give us a new look into some of the universe’s most energetic objects, including black holes, clusters of galaxies, and the aftermath of stellar explosions. We’ll learn more about how they behave and what they’re made of using the data the mission collects after launch.”
The instrument will allow scientists to probe the physical state, motion and compositions of distant exotic objects, shedding light on the most mysterious physical processes in the universe. While visible light has energy levels between two and three electron volts, Resolve will conduct spectroscopy for X-rays with energy levels ranging between 400 and 12,000 electron volts.
There is another instrument on board the spacecraft, one produced entirely by JAXA. This is known as the Xtend instrument, which provides the spacecraft with the largest field of view for any spacecraft that observes the universe in X-ray frequencies, 60 per cent larger than the size of the Moon in the sky. The spacecraft will allow astronomers to explore some of the most inaccessible and extreme locations in the universe, including the crushing interiors of neutron stars, and the relativistic jets emanating from supermassive black holes feasting on the cores of galaxies.
Source: News9 Live
