Jun 1 1990
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA launched a Delta rocket carrying a West German observatory into a 360-mile-high orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The observatory consisted of an x-ray telescope and a wide-field camera for detecting extreme ultraviolet light; scientists hoped the observatory would yield information about forces associated with the center of our galaxy, intergalactic gases, quasars, black holes, hot stars, and objects on the edge of the universe. The observatory was dubbed Rosat, after the German Scientist Wilhelm Roentgen who discovered x-rays in 1895, and promised to be 100 times more sensitive than even the Einstein x-ray Observatory launched in 1978. It was originally scheduled for launch aboard a Space Shuttle in 1987. (LA Times, Jun 2/90; NY Times, Jun 2/90; B Sun, Jun 2/90; P Inq, Jun 2/90)
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