X-ray astronomy is a fairly young branch of science. This is due to the necessity of placing the detectors outside of the earth’s atmosphere. Imaging was a further problem. Initially coded mask imaging the more sophisticated equivalent of pin hole cameras was used. Making use of the fact that X-rays are totally reflected when impinging with very shallow angle on a extremely smooth mirror surface, allowed the construction of focusing X-ray mirror telescopes, as they are used today. The first of those telescopes launched into orbit used gas proportional chambers as focal plane detectors. These detectors have high enough spatial resolution to match the optical properties of the mirror telescopes. They lack however the energy resolution to do direct spectroscopy. Only a very rough measure for the X-ray energies is available.
The situation changed dramatically with the launch of two X-ray observatories CHANDRA and XMM/Newton in 1999. Both of them use CCD detectors for focal imaging. While CHANDRA with its single telescope uses modified optical MOS CCDs, XMM/Newton has in one of its three telescopes a CCD based on a novel principle. This "pn-CCD" has been developed from scratch specifically for this mission and exceeds the properties of all other CCDs used at present in X-ray astronomy. After nearly five years of continuous operation the detector properties have not deteriorated. An advanced type of pn-CCDs has been developed for the ROSITA and DUO missions. A completely new device, the DEPFET pixel detector is under development for the future European X-ray observatory XEUS.
The function principles and properties of the detectors will be described and illustrated with results obtained in space. Their use in other applications will be discussed.

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