The XMM-Newton observatory - A year of exciting science

The XMM-Newton space observatory - a Cornerstone mission in ESA's Horizon 2 000 Programme and originally referred to as the High-Throughput X-ray Spect roscopy Mission - was placed into a 48-hour orbit by the first commercial A riane-5 launch (V504) on 10 December 1999. This brief survey of the scienti fic results obtained during the first year of XMM-Newton operations clearly illustrates that the observatory is more than living up to expectations an d already providing unique and promising results, even before full scientif ic data analysis gets officially underway.