Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics

The Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA, formerly named ASTRO-D) was the fourth cosmic X-ray astronomy mission by JAXA, and the second for which the United States provided part of the scientific payload. The satellite was successfully launched on 20 February 1993. The first eight months of the ASCA mission were devoted to performance verification. Having established the quality of performance of all ASCA's instruments, the spacecraft provided science observations for the remainder of the mission. In this phase the observing program was open to astronomers based at Japanese and U.S. institutions, as well as those located in member states of the European Space Agency.

Observatory data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).