{"id":128019,"date":"2021-09-23T21:22:17","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T04:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/ixpe-nearing-shipment-to-florida-for-december-2021-launch"},"modified":"2021-09-23T21:22:17","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T04:22:17","slug":"ixpe-nearing-shipment-to-florida-for-december-2021-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/ixpe-nearing-shipment-to-florida-for-december-2021-launch","title":{"rendered":"IXPE nearing shipment to Florida for December 2021 launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ixpe-nearing-shipment-to-florida-for-december-2021-launch.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The launch of the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) observatory is now targeting December 13 2021, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The IXPE X-Ray observatory is the latest spacecraft in NASA\u2019s historic Small Explorers (SMEX) program.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/tag\/ixpe\/\">IXPE mission<\/a> was first selected as a part of the Explorers program in January 2017. NASA awarded the IXPE team $188 million for the spacecraft and mission, including the cost of the launch vehicle, post-launch operations, and data analysis. The spacecraft will be used to study Black Holes and other cosmic X-ray mysteries.<\/p>\n<p>Built by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ball.com\/aerospace\/programs\/ixpe\">Ball Aerospace<\/a> at facilities in Boulder, Colorado, the IXPE spacecraft is based on the Ball Configurable Platform (BCP)-100 satellite bus. The BCP-100 is one of Ball Aerospace\u2019s offerings for a modular satellite bus for low-Earth orbit (LEO) operations. It was most recently used by NASA\u2019s Green Propellant Infusion Mission (GPIM) to test a new type of Green propellant for space operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The launch of the Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) observatory is now targeting December 13 2021, onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The IXPE X-Ray observatory is the latest spacecraft in NASA\u2019s historic Small Explorers (SMEX) program. The IXPE mission was first selected as a part of the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":465,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cosmology","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/465"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}