The Astro-E mission Original Research Article

The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), Japan, failed to place the Astro-E satellite into a stable orbit on February 10, 2000. It should have been an international X-ray astronomy observatory characterized by the superior energy resolution of the micro-calorimeter experiment (XRS) and by the wide band spectroscopy with the CCD cameras (XIS) and the hard X-ray detector (HXD). ISAS is now developing the Astro-E2 mission, which should be basically identical to the Astro-E mission and is scheduled to be launched in early 2005.