REDONDO BEACH, Calif., July 15 -- NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, built by TRW, is set to launch aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia on July 20 from Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Chandra will use the world's most powerful x-ray telescope to search for x-ray sources billions of light years from Earth, providing scientists with their first views of celestial phenomena that cannot be seen by human eyes or conventional optical telescopes.
When deployed in a highly elliptical orbit extending more than one-third of the distance to the moon, the 5-ton, 45-foot-tall Chandra will become the third of NASA's Great Observatories to become operational, following the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, also built by TRW.