[Other -- Oral ]

NuSTAR: The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array

Daniel Stern, JPL/Caltech
Fiona Harrison (Caltech), and the NuSTAR Team

NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, is a recently confirmed Small Explorer (SMEX) NASA mission, scheduled for launch in August 2011. NuSTAR will be the high energy NASA mission, andwill probe the X-ray sky approximately two orders of magnitude more sensitively than currently achievable. By focusing X-rays from 6 to 79 keV, NuSTAR will answer fundamental questions about the Universe: How are black holes distributed through the cosmos? How were the elements that compose our bodies and the Earth forged in the explosions of massive stars? What powers the most extreme active galaxies? I will discuss the current status of NuSTAR and the baseline, 2-year science program.