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The long-awaited detection of gravitational waves has opened up a whole new world of astronomy. One of the key efforts is now to tie signals across multiple domains \u2013 for example, a gravitational wave and the associated electromagnetic radiation created by that same event, such as a black hole merger or a gamma-ray burst. We\u2019ll need new equipment to detect such \u201cmultimodal\u201d signals, especially electromagnetic ones. One such project is the Black Hole Coded Aperture Telescope (BlackCAT), which will be launched early this year by a team led by researchers at Penn State.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n BlackCAT is designed to replace aging equipment already capturing high energy emissions, such as X-rays, in space. Swift and Fermi, two leading such telescopes, will be at least 10 years over their expected design lifetimes when a series of new gravitational wave detectors come online. Their aging capabilities limit their usefulness in finding the electromagnetic analog of the once-weekly gravitational wave events that those new detectors hope to find.<\/p>\n Enter BlackCAT, a mission concept initially proposed in 2019. It is designed as a 6U Cubesat with one particular detector for \u201csoft\u201d X-ray detection. Soft X-rays are the lower-energy versions of \u201chard\u201d X-rays typically used in X-ray astronomy. However, they have the added advantage of being easier to detect. They are also easier to isolate to a specific location in the sky, which is essential when mapping a particular EM signal to the source of a gravitational wave event.<\/p>\n \n