One of the first people to suggest the existence of black holes has been honored in a fitting way: the world's premier telescope to study black holes has been made his namesake. The Chandra X-Ray Space Observatory is the primary payload for shuttle mission STS-93.

The work of the late Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar led to the realization that when massive stars lose their fuel, they collapse into objects so dense -- and, as a result, objects with so much gravitational pull -- that they don't even allow light to escape their grasp.

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which goes up with the shuttle, will analyze energy emitted by objects being pulled into the black hole just as the objects are clearing its rim. Scientists hope to use Chandra to learn more about the gravity fields around black holes.

In the 1930's, Chandra, as he was known then, showed that stars whose mass was 1.4 times greater than the sun would eventually collapse into objects which we now know as black holes. Lighter stars, like the Sun, will burn out and become a white dwarf star.

"Chandrasekhar made fundamental contributions to the theory of black holes and other phenomena that the Chandra X-ray Observatory will study. His life and work exemplify the excellence that we can hope to achieve with this great observatory," said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin.

Chandra was a pioneer in the field of astrophysics, but he always maintained a love for art. He compared the writing of Virginia Woolf to an "elegant mathematical formula." He once wrote a paper titled, "On Appolonius, Kepler and Einstein, Newton and Shakespeare, and Madonna and Mrs. Pelham."

Chandra was awarded the Nobel prize in 1983 for his studies of the physical processes important to the structure and evolution of stars.