Posted: Wed, Jun 13, 2012, 8:29 PM ET (0029 GMT) A Pegasus rocket successfully launched a small NASA spacecraft designed to help astronomers track down black holes. An Orbital Sciences Corporation L-1011 aircraft, flying out of Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, released the Pegasus XL rocket at 12:00 pm EDT (1600 GMT). The rocket's first stage ignited five seconds after release, and it and two other stages propelled NASA's NuSTAR into a circular low Earth orbit. NuSTAR, or Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, is designed to detect hard x-ray emissions from astrophysical phenomena, in particular black holes. It will complement observations by other NASA spacecraft at other x-ray energies. The 350-kilogram spacecraft was also built by Orbital, and the project is led by Caltech.

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Pegasus launches NASA astronomy satellite