By Ron Cowen
Second part of a two-part series on X-ray astronomy
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2004/04/3997.jpg?resize=117%2C150&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2004/04/3998.jpg?resize=150%2C57&ssl=1)
In about 2016, a feat of precision engineering may produce the first detailed images of the hellish region immediately surrounding supermassive black holes. That extraordinary exploit would require 33 spacecraft—each wielding an X-ray telescope—that would fly in astonishingly strict formation. Their spacing could vary by no more than 100 times the width of a hydrogen atom.