Uhuru: the first X-ray astronomy satellite
Uhuru: primer satélite de astronomía de rayos X
- Date
- 12 de diciembre de 1970 · confidence high
- Place
- San Marco platform, Malindi, Kilifi, Kenya
- Credited to
- Riccardo Giacconi and colleagues (American Science and Engineering, NASA)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What it is
Launched from an Italian platform off the Kenyan coast, Uhuru scanned the sky in X-rays and catalogued 339 sources. It provided evidence of binary neutron stars and of Cygnus X-1 as a black hole.
'Uhuru' means 'freedom' in Swahili; it was launched on 12 December, Kenya's independence day. Its official name was SAS-1 (Small Astronomy Satellite 1).
What it led to
- X-ray source catalogues (Uhuru, 4U)
- the Einstein and Chandra observatories
- Giacconi's 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics