The nominal launch date of Astro-E2 is February 9th, 2005 - that means it's less than 12 months away!

The Astro-E2 team has been hard at work over the last several years. Here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, we have already accomplished a lot.

• We have shipped 3 units of XRT to Japan. The 4th will be tested next week. We will soon start the assembly of the fifth unit - that's the one to be used in front of the XRS.
• The XRS helium insert - the heart of the XRS instrument - is almost ready to be shipped to Japan. It just has to go through some more tests!

Later in the year, most of the activities will move to Japan. All the scientific instruments will be assembled into the satellite, together with the power, attitude, and communication systems. There will be a lot of testing - we want to make sure everything works, and works together. Then the satellite will be shipped to the launch site and mounted on the launch rocket.

It will be an exciting 12 months for the team. We hope to share some of these excitements with you on regular basis.

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