17 March
2004: On 17 March 2004, Francois Lebrun (CEA Saclay, Gif sur Yvette, France) and his collaborators reported in Nature, the discovery of gamma-ray sources towards the direction of the Galactic centre by ESA's Integral spacecraft.
ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory had resolved the diffuse glow of gamma rays in the centre of our Galaxy and had shown that most of it was produced by 91 individual sources.
Integral's high sensitivity and pointing precision had allowed it to detect these celestial objects where all other telescopes, for more than thirty years, had seen nothing but a mysterious, blurry fog of gamma rays.
On the same day in 2004, Mars Express scientists announced that fields of perennial water ice ahd been found on Mars, stretching out from the south pole of the Red Planet. The observations were made by the OMEGA instrument on board the spacecraft between 18 January and 11 February 2003.
