History of Chandra X-Ray Observatory

In this photograph, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) was installed and mated to the Inertial Upper Stage (IUS) inside the Shuttle Columbia's cargo bay at the Kennedy Space Center. The CXO will help astronomers world-wide better understand the structure and evolution of the universe by studying powerful sources of x-rays such as exploding stars, matter falling into black holes, and other exotic celestial objects. X-ray astronomy can only be done from space because Earth's atmosphere blocks x-rays from reaching the surface. The Observatory provides images that are 50 times more detailed than previous x-ray missions. At more than 45 feet in length and weighing more than 5 tons, the CXO was carried into low-Earth orbit by the Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-93 mission) on July 22, 1999. The Observatory was deployed from the Shuttle's cargo bay at 155 miles above the Earth. Two firings of an attached IUS rocket, and several firings of its own onboard rocket motors, after separating from the IUS, placed the Observatory into its working orbit. The IUS is a solid rocket used to place spacecraft into orbit or boost them away from the Earth on interplanetary missions. Since its first use by NASA in 1983, the IUS has supported a variety of important missions, such as the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, Galileo spacecraft, Magellan spacecraft, and Ulysses spacecraft. The IUS was built by the Boeing Aerospace Co., at Seattle, Washington and managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center.