IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer)

By Rick Smith If the secret to happiness is pursuing and achieving goals that bring contentment to both the heart and the intellect, then Kacie Davis, a flight controller for NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), is living her best life – and she took an unexpected path to get there. Initially, it wasn't the …

By Rick Smith As NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission explores black holes, neutron stars, and other cosmic phenomena – helping to answer fundamental questions about extreme space environments – it relies on the mission operations team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, or LASP. Some 700 people – engineers, scientists, mission-operations personnel …