25 years of the XMM-Newton satellite
On 10 December 1999, the Ariane 504 rocket, which at the time had a lot to make up for after dropping the Clusters mission in the mangroves of French Guiana, pulled out all the stops to place a 4-tonne, 10-metre-high monster into an orbit rising to 114,000 km. Artist's view of the XMM satellite...