Chandra Turns Ten

About ten years ago Space Shuttle Columbia launched hauling 55,000 pounds worth of astronomers' dreams -- the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. This was the heaviest payload a space shuttle ever lifted – and one of the best day's labor the work-horse space shuttle ever put in.

Above : In a beautiful night launch, the space shuttle (STS-93) carries Chandra aloft.



Above: Chandra's first light image of the Cas A supernova remnant.



Above: A false-color X-ray image of the Cas A supernova remnant. Red traces iron-rich material; greenish-white denotes material enriched in silicon and sulfur. The blue regions are peppered with X-ray absorbing space dust.



Above: A composite Hubble-Chandra image of the Crab Nebula. Credit: NASA and Chandra Science Center



Above: A Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the central region of our Milky Way galaxy.



Above: This Chandra image gave scientists their first look at X-rays from Mars.