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The Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER) is a future NASA Explorer program mission dedicated to the study of the extraordinary gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear physics environments embodied by neutron stars. It will explore the exotic states of matter where density and pressure are higher than in atomic nuclei.
NICER will enable rotation-resolved spectroscopy of the thermal and non-thermal emissions of neutron stars in the soft (0.2–12 keV) X-ray band with unprecedented sensitivity, probing interior structure, the origins of dynamic phenomena, and the mechanisms that underlies the most powerful cosmic particle accelerators known.
NICER will achieve these goals by deploying, following launch in December 2016, an X-ray timing and spectroscopy instrument as an attached payload aboard the International Space Station (ISS).
