Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
How It All Started
NASA: We have booster ignition and liftoff of Columbia, reaching new heights for women
and X-ray Astronomy.
Narrator: Just after midnight on July 23, 1999, the Space Shuttle Columbia launched
into orbit with the heaviest payload ever carried by a shuttle. Its precious cargo was
the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has helped revolutionize our understanding of the Universe.
This Shuttle flight, known as STS-93, was historic. Not only did this flight carry Chandra
into space, but it also marked the first time a woman, Eileen Collins, ever commanded a
Space Shuttle. The other members of the crew, who were all crucial to the mission's success,
were mission specialists Steven Hawley, Cady Coleman, and Michel Tognini, along with pilot
Jeff Ashby.
For those scientists who were looking forward to using Chandra, being at the launch was
particularly special. Dr. Belinda Wilkes, who uses Chandra to study black holes at the
centers of galaxies, shares her memory of that night.
Belinda: It was very exciting. It's the only launch I've ever seen so it's definitely a
very memorable experience and I recommend it to anybody. But particularly when you're
personally involved. It was very exciting. It was a night-time launch, which is dramatic.
Probably more dramatic than during the day because it lights up the whole sky, and it
looks like day for a certain length of time.
Narrator: While the launch was exciting, it was also very stressful. Professor Claude
Canizares oversaw the construction of Chandra's transmission gratings at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Claude: As we approached midnight and the shuttle main engines, finally on the third
try, lit up, my clothes, 3 miles away, were vibrating. Well, I was 3 miles away and my
clothes were pretty heavy. Inside Chandra was this array of very thin plastic films
with these absolutely submicroscopic features on them that of course we had tested acoustically
as hard as we could, and we were convinced they would survive. But I have to tell you,
when you're standing there and you feel the power of those engines, and you know what
Narrator: The successful launch and deployment of Chandra was no accident. Rather, it took
years of dedication and hard work from many people. Dr. Harvey Tananbaum, director of
the Chandra X-ray Center, has been involved with the mission since it was first conceived
in 1976. He has seen how such a large and complicated mission such as Chandra really
becomes more than the sum of its many, many parts.
Harvey: The engineers have the expertise on how to build these complicated things and
the managers make sure you stay on some kind of a schedule and budget, and all the different
disciplines and different entities, industry, university, science research community and
NASA, really working together, I think provide a wonderful model for large projects to be
looking at to say, "How do you do these challenging things and how do you build them and get the
kind of end-result where everybody's very proud and very pleased with what they did?"
Narrator: Roger Brissenden, manager of Chandra's Operation Control Center, agrees that it is
the team approach that has led to Chandra's good health and performance.
Roger: It's a major asset for NASA and the taxpayer, and it's the premier x-ray observatory.
So we understand that and we take that very seriously. And I think that we've continued
the partnership with NASA, not just through the launch period, but all the way now, 7
years in operations with that same sort of perspective.
Narrator: So, Happy 8th Birthday, Chandra. And thanks and congratulations to all of the
men and women who worked so diligently to make it a great eight years, with hopefully
many more to come.