Astro-E/Astro-E2 - Definition

Astro-E/Astro-E2

A X-ray/gamma-ray mission built jointly by the United States and Japan. Astro E was destroyed in February 2000, when a Japanese M-5 rocket failed to lift the instrument into orbit. A replacement mission, Astro-E2, was succesfully launched in July 2005, and subsequently renamed Suzaku.

Astro-E2 was successfully launched on 12:30 pm JST on July 10, 2005 from the Uchinoura Space Center (USC) in Japan. Soon after launch, the mission was renamed Suzaku.

Suzaku is the re-build of Astro-E, which was unfortunately lost during launch (10 February 2000). Suzaku (as Astro-E) has been developed at the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) in collaboration with the US. This is Japan's fifth X-ray astronomy mission. Suzaku is the first satellite that carries a new type of X-ray spectrometer, the X-ray micro-calorimeter, which provides unprecedented energy resolution compared to non-dispersive instruments.