Searching for a Pulse

Abstract

The Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an International Space Station (ISS) mission of opportunity that was selected as part of NASA's Explorer Program. It is the first NASA mission dedicated to the study of neutron stars and has been in operation since its 13 June 2017 installation on the ISS (following a 3 June launch), nearly 50 years after the discovery of neutron stars. NICER studies the energetics, dynamics and structure of neutron stars through observations in the soft X-ray band, exploring rapid brightness and spectral fluctuations with high-precision time stamping and spectroscopy of individually detected X-ray photons. Compared with its predecessor X-ray timing astrophysics mission, the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer(RXTE), which launched over two decades ago, NICER provides order-of-magnitude improvements in spectral resolution, absolute timing resolution and sensitivity.