Van Dorn Books · 2021
This is the story of the Rossi X ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), an Earth-orbiting NASA observatory built to study X-ray-emitting celestial objects. Bradt provides a personal account of the 20-year effort of his team at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research to bring about the RXTE mission. Technical and bureaucratic hurdles facing the mission are described with humor and wry personal anecdotes. The payoff: 16 years of successful observations resulting in critical new insights into black holes and neutron stars.