One of NASA’s four Great Observatories. After being launched by the Space Shuttle, Chandra was boosted into a high elliptical orbit from which it can make long duration, uninterrupted measurements of X-ray sources in the universe. It uses the most sensitive X-ray telescope ever built, consisting of four pairs of nearly cylindrical mirrors with diameters of 0.68-1.4 m, to observe X-rays in the energy range 0.1-10 keV. These mirrors focus X-rays on to two of Chandra’s four science instruments: the High Resolution Camera and the CCD (charge-coupled device) Imaging Spectrometer. International participants in the mission include Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. Known before launch as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), the observatory was renamed in honor of the distinguished Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.
Shuttle deployment
Jul. 23, 1999
Shuttle Mission
STS-93
Orbit
10,157 × 138,672 km × 29.0°
Length
12.2 m
Reference
Tucker, Wllace H., and Karen Tucker. Revealing the Universe: The Making of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. New York: Harvard University Press, 2001.
