TRW-Built Chandra X-Ray Observatory Scheduled For Launch On July 20; NASA's Newest `X-Ray Eye In The Sky' Promises New, Expanded View Of Universe.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 12, 1999--

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, built by TRW, has been scheduled for launch aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia early in the morning of July 20 from Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Carrying the world's most powerful X-ray telescope, Chandra will search the heavens for X-ray sources billions of light years away, revealing for the first time celestial phenomena that cannot be seen by human eyes or conventional optical telescopes.

When deployed in a highly elliptical orbit that extends more than one-third of the way to the moon, the 5-ton, 45-foot-tall Chandra will become the third of NASA's series of Great Observatories to become operational, joining the Hubble Space Telescope and the TRW-built Compton Gamma Ray Observatory in orbit.

Chandra will be launched as part of NASA's STS-93 mission, which will be commanded by U.S. Air Force Col. Eileen Collins, the first woman to command a U.S. shuttle mission. The pre-dawn liftoff is scheduled to occur at approximately 12:36 a.m. EDT.

"TRW is proud to have led the contractor team that brought NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory from the drawing board more than a decade ago to the launching pad where it now stands," said Timothy W. Hannemann, executive vice president and general manager, TRW Space & Electronics Group. "This incredibly capable, world-class X-ray observatory is an example of why NASA has turned to TRW for more than 40 years to produce the spacecraft for its most challenging space science missions."

A significant factor in that strong partnership, explained Hannemann, has been TRW's ongoing success in helping NASA reduce the cost of its major science missions, without sacrificing the science capabilities. The company's focus on innovation and technology, for example, helped NASA reduce overall Chandra mission costs by a factor of two in a 1992 program restructuring.

TRW will continue this strategy with NASA, he added, by further reducing costs for future telescopes such as the Next Generation Space Telescope (the successor to Hubble), the Space Interferometry Mission and Constellation-X, the successor to Chandra.

After Chandra is deployed from the Space Shuttle, it will be boosted to a higher altitude transfer orbit by a Boeing-provided Inertial Upper Stage. From there, its own Integral Propulsion System will place it in its final operational orbit that measures nominally 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) x 140,000 kilometers (86,900 miles). The satellite will then orbit the Earth once every 64 hours.

Originally called the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility, the Chandra X-ray Observatory was renamed by NASA in December 1998 in honor of the late Indian-American Nobel Laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost astrophysicists.

Among friends and colleagues, Chandrasekhar was known simply as "Chandra," a word that also means "Moon" or "luminous" in Sanskrit. Chandrasekhar made fundamental contributions to the theory of black holes and other phenomena that the observatory will study.

A TRW-led team that includes the Eastman Kodak Co., Raytheon Optical Systems Inc. (ROSI), Optical Coating Laboratory Inc. and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. designed, built and integrated Chandra for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.

Instruments for the satellite were provided by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), Penn State University and MIT. Transmission gratings for the telescope were developed by the Space Research Organization of the Netherlands and MIT. SAO will operate Chandra for NASA and manage its science mission from the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center in Cambridge, Mass.

TRW has been developing scientific, communications and environmental satellite systems for NASA since 1958. Based in Cleveland, TRW provides advanced technology products and services for the global automotive, aerospace and information systems markets. The company's 1998 sales totaled nearly $12 billion. TRW news releases are available on the corporate Web site: www.trw.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Two images of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are available as part of a Smart News Release(tm) on Business Wire's home page: http://www.businesswire.com. Additional information on the Chandra launch is available at http://chandra.nasa.gov and http://chandra.harvard.edu.