The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), a satellite designed to measure radiation emanating from the universe's oddball denizens, is already poised to become the space agency's next celebrity. Launched in 1995 to little fanfare, the $195 million RXTE probes the enigmatic celestial objects created by the deaths of giant stars. Last week, two teams of astrophysicists--one Italian, one American--announced that data collected by the RXTE had guided them to a groundbreaking discovery: Black holes and neutron stars, two of the heavens' most mysterious residents, literally drag space and time around them as they spin--a phenomenon called "frame dragging."

from: A new wrinkle in time by Brendan I. Koerner
source: U.S. News & World Report, 17 November 1997
via: HighBeam Research