Theodore von Karman Lecture

The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, launched on June 13, 2012, and is the first telescope to focus high energy X-ray light. Compared to the previous generation of non-focusing observatories working in this energy band, this change in technology provides NuSTAR with 10x sharper images and 100x improved sensitivity. High energy X-ray light provides a unique probe of the most energetic phenomena in the universe, from flares on the surface of the Sun, to the explosions of stars, to the extreme environments around neutron stars and black holes. This talk will present some of the highlights from the first year of NuSTAR observations and describe how they are changing our picture of the extreme universe.