On Thursday, December 9th around 1 a.m. EST, NASA launched its final mission of the year. The X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) mission on Space X Falco 9 rocket launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

The new observatory will help scientist further develop their studies on the polarization of objects that emit X-rays. In addition, it will lead to new insight on objects such as neutron stars and pulsar wind nebulae, as well as stellar and supermassive black holes.

The space craft developed for this mission was made from a collaboration between Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala., and the Italian Space Agency and Ball Aerospace. The observatory itself has 3 telescopes in one, which will help shed light onto particular areas of space that scientists wish to study, including polarized objects.

Polarization in space represents how the electromagnetic rays are physically oriented in space. In simple terms, the polarization on objects like sunglasses help reduce reflective glare from another source and filter the excess light from the polarized sunglasses.

“[An X-ray] comes from gases that are over a million degrees hot. And so, that X-ray comes from objects we’ve read about, like black holes, like pulsars, these amazing almost lighthouse structures, very compact stars or exploding stars,” states NASA’s associate administrator for science, Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen.

X-ray astronomy has been around since 1962 and in 1999 NASA launched the Chandra X-Ray Observatory along with the Hubble Space Telescope which helped scientist from around the world gain X-ray images of exotic environments around space.

This launch should allow scientists to continue their studies and hopefully they will discover something that will help us advance in space exploration.