Watch this: NASA launches NuSTAR telescope on a quest to observe black holes

At 9AM PDT Wednesday, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array — that’s NuSTAR to you — dropped from a “Stargazer” aircraft, rocketed off into space on a Pegasus XL, and finally decoupled to reach low Earth orbit fourteen minutes later. The successful launch means NASA has another powerful set of sensors in space, able to observe high-energy X-rays thanks to a specifically-designed array of mirrors. NASA will use NuSTAR on a two-year mission to map and observe black holes with 100 times better sensitivity and ten times the resolution of previous telescopes. You can watch the highlights of NuSTAR’s successful launch below and find much more information about the telescope on NASA’s site.