A major blow to x-ray astronomy occurred in August, a month after the launch of the Japanese/American spacecraft Suzuku X-ray Observatory, formerly known as Astro-E2. The observatory lost the use of its most important instrument, the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS). The scientific objectives for Suzaku were to study: hot plasmas in x and gamma rays; structure and evolution of the universe; wide band spectroscopy of black hole candidates and active galactic nuclei.

The XRS was successfully cooled and calibrated after reaching orbit. To work properly, it had to be cooled to a temperature of -273.09 degrees Celsius (.06 degrees Kelvin) for high-resolution. Before it could be used to look at the sky, all of the helium coolant boiled away due to a leak in the cooling system. It still has 4 x-ray imaging spectrometers and a hard x-ray detector to observe high-energy x-rays.