Visual composition to mark the 25-anniversary of XMM-Newton launch. The mission was launched on Ariane-5 from ESA’s Kourou space port, on 10 December 1999.
With a trove of more than a million detections of X-ray sources under its belt, the space telescope has contributed fundamentally to a better understanding of our cosmos. Thanks to XMM-Newton, scientists can study in detail some of the most dramatic events and phenomena in our Universe, from Jupiter’s X-ray auroras to the state of matter at the edge of black holes.