On December 10, 2004 it has been 5 years since the XMM-Newton observatory was successfully launched into orbit.

The scientific community responded enthusiastically to every call for observing time proposals, achieving oversubscription factors always of 7 or more.

XMM-Newton has performed about 3800 scientific observations, most of them publicly available in the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA).

About 700 publications in the refereed literature are based on XMM-Newton observations, of which 290 were published in 2004.

XMM-Newton is the second cornerstone of ESA's Horizon 2000 Science Programme.
Given its excellent performance, its extended lifetime, and the resulting large number of publications, it is fully meeting and indeed exceeding the originally raised expectations.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support and interest in this great mission!

Yours sincerely,
XMM-Newton SOC
_______________________________________________
XMM-NEWS mailing list
XMM-NEWS@xmm.vilspa.esa.es
http://xmm.vilspa.esa.es/mailman/listinfo/xmm-news