Compton Observatory

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• Compton Observatory Science Workshop [microform], 1992:t.p. (Sept. 23-25, 1991) pref. (Compton Observatory was formerly the Gamma Ray Observatory or 'GRO'; this name change was announced during the workshop)
• Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, c1993:pref. (named after Arthur Holly Compton; Compton Observatory) p. 3 (Arthur Holly Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (Compton); launched 5 Apr. 1991; spacecraft; Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (Compton); Compton) p. 4 (mission duration anticipated to be 6-10 yrs.) p. 9 (deployed 7 Apr. 1991; sci. oper. began 16 May 1991; orbital altitude 350-450 km.)
• Compton Observatory newsletter, July 1992:p. 6 (Compton GRO); Aug. 1993: p. 2 (CGRO)
• PPMI "lessons learned," Gamma Ray Observatory, USAN̲ASAP̲PMIG̲ROA̲VI0̲01 [CF] 1998:disc label (Gamma Ray Observatory)
• NASA release 91-151, Sept. 23, 1991, accessed online, Sept. 29, 1998(NASA announced today that the Gamma Ray Observatory, deployed April 7, 1991, from the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be renamed in honor of Nobel Prize-winning American physicist Arthur Holly Compton. The new official name of the 17-ton orbiting spacecraft is the Arthur Holly Compton Gamma Ray Observatory or Compton Observatory)

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was a space observatory detecting photons with energies from 20 keV to 30 GeV, in Earth orbit from 1991 to 2000. The observatory featured four main telescopes in one spacecraft, covering X-rays and gamma rays, including various specialized sub-instruments and detectors. Following 14 years of effort, the observatory was launched from Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-37 on April 5, 1991, and operated until its deorbit on June 4, 2000. It was deployed in low Earth orbit at 450 km (280 mi) to avoid the Van Allen radiation belt. It was the heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown at that time at 16,300 kilograms (35,900 lb). Costing $617 million, the CGRO was part of NASA's Great Observatories series, along with the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. It was the second of the series to be launched into space, following the Hubble Space Telescope. The CGRO was named after Arthur Compton, an American physicist and former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis who received the Nobel prize for work involved with gamma-ray physics. CGRO was built by TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems) in Redondo Beach, California. CGRO was an international collaboration and additional contributions came from the European Space Agency and various universities, as well as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Successors to CGRO include the ESA INTEGRAL spacecraft (launched 2002), NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission (launched 2004), ASI AGILE (satellite) (launched 2007) and NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (launched 2008); all remain operational as of May 2023.