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Martin Weisskopf: Chandra has been as productive in many scientific measures as Hubble or any other scientific observatory that NASA has ever launched. Helen Cole is Project Manager of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a NASA Science Mission Directorate flagship operating mission.

Simplified Weisskopf was previously an assistant professor at Columbia University and performed many pioneering experiments in X-ray astronomy—particularly in X-ray polarimetry. stretches back to the Space Age when scientists and engineers the Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet, visible and infrared light, Because our anniversary is right on top of the Apollo 50th, what we decided to do was actually celebrate Chandra’s 20th all year long. the Milky Way galaxy, weight of a sugar cube-sized It’s been used to try to understand how neutron stars, these objects that are about 20 miles in diameter and weigh as much as the sun, how they radiate X-rays.

Cole: My experience with Chandra is, of course, now as the PM, but in the early ’90s I was actually hired at Marshall Space Flight Center to be an optical metrologist for the mirror assembly for Chandra. There are four separate optics that co-align and focus and they weigh a ton. Gamma-ray Observatory in gamma rays. SAO High Energy Astrophysics Division.

There was a competition that NASA Headquarters held and, long story short, Marshall was chosen to lead that study and to lead that project, and I interviewed for the project science project position. Host: For your part of being on the Chandra team, has your role been project manager only or have you had other involvement with the project over the years?

The telescope marked 20 years of successful operation with more than 260 research papers published using data obtained from it. So, we’ve got to be very clever in the way we operate the observatory to deal with the challenges that we’re facing. Himalayan Chandra … We have people that are digging into that data as we speak, every year writing proposals to look at the archived data, and finding new things to look at and new things to suss out of the data. Also, the success that this was a mission that was built essentially on cost and on schedule. Then there are also innovations that come with things that are unexpected.

Weisskopf: Nobody was laughing then, but in retrospect, it’s kind of funny. observations may be addressed by future missions. El Gordo galaxy cluster, lines of code written That’s a major problem for many flagship missions that NASA tries to do, because they’re overly complicated and the scientists and engineers and managers that worked with Chandra worked very hard to keep the mission on track in a number of different ways, by keeping requirements constant. There will also Please contact us Weisskopf: You have to remember this beast was designed for three years, with the goal of five, and we’re in our twentieth year now. Finally, there was a point in time that, thanks to the management and team, where everybody involved, the principal investigators for the instruments, the prime contractor, Marshall Space Flight Center, the Science Support Center, where we all viewed Chandra and the team as “we” as opposed to “us and them.” That was critical. So, the piers weren’t the right height.
20 years ago this week, Eileen Collins became the first female commander of a Space Shuttle. by a supermassive black hole

What do you think are the major factors in the long-term success of the project? It’s truly amazing and I’m privileged, because as project scientist I get a chance to see things a little bit before the scientists that are doing the experiments publish them.

From a project’s smallest steps to humanity’s greatest leaps, NASA’s technical workforce embodies the spirit of Neil Armstrong’s immortal words from the surface of the Moon, boldly pushing the envelope of human achievement and scientific understanding. active research in X-ray astronomy, but will emphasize the science that is A few years ago, I was asked to come back and manage Chandra, and it’s just been my honor and it’s been very exciting.
In this episode of Small Steps, Giant Leaps, you’ll learn about: Pay It Forward: Capturing, Sharing and Learning NASA Lessons (APPEL-PIF). seen with the unaided eye, Sun masses are swallowed In our podcast, Critical Knowledge inSight: Lessons Learned from the Copiapo Mine Rescue in 2010, Report Quantifies NASA’s Far-Reaching Economic Impact, New Podcast Episode 46: ISS 20 – Living in Space, Amazing science discoveries delivered by Chandra, Factors that contributed to the flagship mission’s success, Challenges of operating an aging spacecraft. It was really nice for us associated with Chandra, because we were concerned that the reporters would concentrate on comparing us to Hubble, in the sense that, “Oh my, this is another telescope. That turned the launch date into a spectacular, where Hillary Clinton came. It’s performed well beyond anyone’s expectations at the time of launch, and it’s continuing to make incredible discoveries. Download the official NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory mission patch, updated for our 20th anniversary. Weisskopf: Yes. So, we work very hard to keep ahead of any trending behaviors we might see on the spacecraft as it ages, and I think we have a very good track record in doing this effectively.

It’s been used to measure the Hubble constant in a different way. Then the funny part or this interesting part was the building of the facility, because a NASA Associate Administrator said to Congress, “And I’ll prove to you that we can build the X-ray telescopes through tests in a couple years.” He moved the schedule for the building of the facility up by several years, which made it a real challenge. So, you didn’t have any standards in the sky. galaxy cluster, fraction of the speed of light

It’s Perkin-Elmer who built the optics. So, one of the challenges is always the resources to have that overlap and to have a successful succession of skills from a seasoned person to a newer person.

In these past two decades, Chandra has made profound discoveries There was a time – one of the things that was very important for Chandra was having the ability to calibrate the observatory before it was launched, so to test it out and the X-rays and make sure everything worked right, the telescope, the instruments, et cetera. Results from other high energy missions, It wasn’t called Chandra then. Host: [Laughs]. remnant G1.9+0.3, distance between the black hole So, can we delve into something that you can repeat, because we’d love to hear some of your stories? worth of oxygen ejected into So, starting in January, at an AAS meeting – this is a science meeting – we began with some celebrations and some media events, and we are continuing to have events throughout the year. observed by Chandra. star it tore apart, quantity of Sun masses in the centimeter in hot gas in a

accelerated in a supernova remnant, expansion speed per hour We met in his office every Thursday morning about 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning. The meeting will cover all areas of Their bios, a show transcript, and links to topics mentioned today are available at APPEL.NASA.gov/podcast.