The Chandra X-Ray Observatory: An overview

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, one of NASA's Great Observatories, was successfully launched on July 23, 1999 by the Space Shuttle Columbia. After release from Columbia, an Inertial Upper Stage was used to further boost the observatory. After five subsequent firings over 15 days of an internal propulsion system, the Observatory was placed in a highly elliptical orbit. The first x-rays focussed by the telescope were observed on August 12, 1999. Despite an initial surprise that the x-ray telescope was far more efficient for concentrating low-energy protons than had been anticipated, the observatory is performing well and is returning superb scientific data. Operating together with other space observatories, most notably the recently activated XMM-Newton, it is clear that with Chandra we are entering a new era of discovery in high-energy astrophysics.