CAPE CANAVERAL - After more than two decades of planning, NASA's Chandra Observatory sailed into position early Saturday to begin a five-year mission illuminating X-ray emissions from the cosmos.
"Everything seems to have gone as planned," Dave Drachlis, a spokesman at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said after the telescope's fifth and final engine firing at 1:43 a.m. EDT.
The seven-minute, 44-second burst from two of the telescope's maneuvering thrusters raised the lowest point of the spacecraft's orbit to about 6,012 miles.
The observatory is circling the planet at an extremely high orbit which stretches as far as 86,458 miles from Earth - about one-third of the way to the moon. Soaring beyond Earth's radiation belts and with an unobstructed view of the universe, the telescope should be able to spend about 70 percent of each orbit conducting scientific investigations.
Several weeks' work remains until the Chandra Observatory will be able to set its X-ray eyes on the universe. The telescope, which is NASA's third of four planned major space-based observatories, is being systematically turned on, tested and calibrated. The first image from the $1.6-billion telescope is expected later this month, said Drachlis.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory, previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility or AXAF, was launched into space aboard the shuttle Columbia on July 23. After a boost from a Boeing-built Inertial Upper Stage engine, the telescope has been using its onboard maneuvering system to refine its orbit.
Once engineers verify Chandra's final orbit is suitable, the propulsion system will be deactivated, said Drachlis. Efforts will then be concentrated on preparing the telescope's science instruments.
Chandra should be able to see some of the most fascinating, bizarre and mysterious manifestations of our universe. High-energy X-rays are emitted by celestial phenomena that are undergoing violent changes, such as matter being sucked into black holes, exploding stars and quasars.
The spacecraft joins the Hubble Space Telescope and the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory already in orbit. The fourth member of the Great Observatory program is the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, or SIRTF, which is scheduled to be launched on an expendable booster in late 2001.
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