Contents:

The "Groovie Movie" - see the sky as if you had "X-ray Eyes"!

Images of RXTE from Assembly to Orbit

RXTE Launch: Movies and Computer Animation

The Groovie Movie

• The High Energy Groovie Movie - check out RXTE's first music video, featuring black holes, pulsars, and the night sky viewed with "X-ray eyes."

Images of RXTE from Assembly to Orbit

• RXTE's Proportional Counter Array (PCA) During Assembly.

• A Pre-Assembly view of the HEXTE Instrument.

• The All-Sky Monitor Instrument.

• Diagram of the Delta II Launch Vehicle with RXTE Payload.

• The RXTE Staff Before Launch.

• On the Shoulders of Giants.

• Up Close and Personal.

• The Delta II on the Eve of Launch

• Liftoff!!

• Artist's Conception of RXTE in Action.

RXTE Launch: Movies and Computer Animation

• RXTE Prelaunch Activities
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• Launch of the RXTE satellite. Listen to the rocket's roar on liftoff!
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• Launch of the RXTE Satellite With Narration from Mission Control!
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• Jettison of Delta rocket boosters. Watch the boosters fall away. Be sure to look at the rocket's tail closely!
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• Animation: Deployment after launch of XTE solar array panels. RXTE was put into a Low Earth Orbit by a Delta launch vehicle. After separation from the Delta second stage, both solar arrays were deployed. The high gain antennas were then deployed one at a time.
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• Animation: View of the RXTE satellite fully deployed. The scientific objective of RXTE is to make temporal and spectral studies of celestial X-ray sources in the 2 to 200 keV spectrum. RXTE will also perform continual all-sky surveys to acquire long term plots of source intensities and to observe transient phenomena.
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• Animation: The RXTE satellite in orbit. RXTE is a three axis stabilized spacecraft with two high-gain communication antennas that continually track TDRSS east and TDRSS west. As it orbits the Earth, the spacecraft remains inertially fixed, the solar arrays normal to the sun-line, and instrument detectors pointed to their target.
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• Animation: The All-Sky Monitor (ASM) Instrument. The All-Sky Monitor, or ASM, independently rotates and will continuously scan 70% of the sky in each orbit. Data are observed in the 2-10 keV energy range. These data are used by the science team to identify new sources or changes of known sources.
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• Animation: The Proportional Counter Array (PCA) Instrument The Proportional Counter Array, or PCA, has five proportional counter units that observe sources in the X-ray energy range of 2-60 keV. The PCA data will be used to study changes in source behavior on day-to-year time scales.
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• Animation: The High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) Instrument. The High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment, or HEXTE, collects data in the 20-200 keV X-ray energy range. Two independent clusters alternately move on and off X-ray sources.
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• Animation: XTE repositions to observe a new target. At a pre-specified time, the RXTE attitude control system receives instructions from the onboard computer memory to rotate the spacecraft body to align the instrument detectors to a new target. To observe a new target, the spacecraft will rotate about the axis that provides the shortest path to the new target. This is known as the eigenaxis.
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Video Software and Drivers

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