NASA-Funded Sounding Rocket Solves One Cosmic Mystery, Reveals Another

It wasn’t until the flight of the DXL sounding rocket, short for Diffuse X-ray emission from the Local galaxy, that scientists had concrete answers about the X-rays’ sources. In a new study, published Sept. 10, 2016, in the Astrophysical Journal, DXL’s data confirms some of our ideas about where these X-rays come from, in turn strengthening our understanding of our solar neighborhood’s early history. But it also reveals a new mystery – an entire group of X-rays that don’t come from any known source.