January 2024 - IXPE wins Bruno Rossi Prize!

The 2024 HEAD Bruno Rossi Prize has been awarded to Martin Weisskopf, Paolo Soffitta and the IXPE team for their development of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer whose novel measurements advance our understanding of particle acceleration and emission from astrophysical shocks, black holes and neutron stars.

The Bruno Rossi Prize is awarded annually in honor of Bruno Rossi "for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work" and is the highest honor specifically in high-energy astrophysics.

Feb 14, 2022 IXPE first light!

Launched on 2021 December 09 (06:00 UTC), the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a NASA-ASI mission to measure x-ray polarization from compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes, which serve as laboratories for exploring extreme gravitational and magnetic fields. With its imaging capabilities, IXPE will also map the magnetic-field structure of a few extended sources such as supernova remnants and pulsar wind nebulae.

Credits: NASA/Joel Kowsky

On behalf of the international IXPE partnership, Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) manages the mission and generates IXPE science data products. The HEASARC hosts the permanent data archive and provides software tools released with HEASoft.

IXPE is the product of a collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), with major participation from Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) and National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Roma Tre University, Stanford University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other university partners include Nagoya University, RIKEN, and the University of Colorado; primary industry partners are Ball Aerospace (Mission prime) and OHB-Italia (Instrument).

For more information, see the About IXPE tab.