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In October 2022 the brightest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, GRB 221009A, swept over Earth. This illustration shows its direction on the sky, seen through our Milky Way. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Watching the Universe’s most violent moments
Watching the Universe’s most violent moments
Daksha’s main goal is to catch the brief, powerful flashes of X-rays and gamma rays from cosmic explosions: colliding neutron stars that also send out gravitational waves, and the gamma-ray bursts that mark the deaths of massive stars. Along the way, it will study everything from magnetars to our own Sun.
For astronomers: technical details
For astronomers: technical details
The full science case — rate estimates, assumptions and comparisons with other missions — is in Bhalerao et al. 2024, Science with the Daksha High Energy Transients Mission (Experimental Astronomy 57, 23; arXiv). All Daksha papers are listed on our Publications page.
Why watch the sky in X-rays and gamma rays?
Why watch the sky in X-rays and gamma rays?
The most energetic events in the Universe shine brightest in X-rays and gamma rays, and many of them are over in seconds. Our atmosphere blocks this light, so it can only be studied from space. To catch these flashes you need detectors that watch as much of the sky as possible, all the time — because nobody knows where or when the next one will happen.
In August 2017, gravitational-wave detectors picked up ripples from two neutron stars colliding 130 million light-years away. Less than two seconds later, gamma-ray satellites recorded a faint flash from the same event. That single observation, followed up by telescopes all over the world, answered questions astronomers had been asking for decades and led to more than a thousand scientific papers. It remains the only confirmed case. Daksha is designed to find many more.
What Daksha will study
What Daksha will study
Catching the flash of light from colliding neutron stars.
The brightest explosions in the Universe — hundreds every year.
Using the ‘direction’ of light to see inside a cosmic jet.
Outbursts from the strongest magnets in the Universe.
Do mysterious radio flashes also shine in X-rays?
High-energy X-rays from solar flares, with four detectors always facing the Sun.
Using two satellites to hunt for tiny black holes from the dawn of time.
Keeping time with spinning neutron stars.
And much more
And much more
Daksha’s data will also let scientists measure the low-energy X-ray spectra of bursts, which are poorly studied today; track the brightness of dozens of bright X-ray sources every day by watching them rise and set behind the Earth; catch novae (explosions on the surfaces of white dwarf stars); and study terrestrial gamma-ray flashes — bursts of gamma rays produced by thunderstorms here on Earth. All of these are described in the Daksha science paper.
Support Daksha
Support Daksha
If you would like to see Daksha fly, please take a minute to fill in our short support form. Every response helps show the scientific community’s interest in the mission.
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