The data from Chandra prompted new discoveries about the evolution of galaxies, the nature of the black holes, dark matter, and the dimensions of the universe.
The telescope's angular resolution, at 0.5 arcsecond, is ten times better than its predecessor and equivalent to being able to read newspaper text from half a mile away.
The Chandra x-ray mirrors resulted from over two decades of collaboration between Van Speybroeck and colleagues at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and scientists and engineers affiliated with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, TRW Inc., Hughes-Danbury (now BF Goodrich Aerospace), Optical Coating Laboratories, Inc. and Eastman-Kodak.
After completing his PhD in nuclear physics at MIT, Van Speybroeck joined a team at American Science and Engineering headed by eventual Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Riccardo Giacconi on the first X-ray telescopes, built as part of Skylab (launched in 1970), the first US space station, and Uhuru (launched in 1973), the first x-ray astronomy space observatory.
Van Speybroeck intended to use his Chandra observation time, in part, to independently verify the Hubble Constant, which is key to understanding the universe's size, shape and age.