Silicon pore X-ray optics for the NewAthena telescope
The European Space Agency (ESA), cosine and its partners have been developing for 20 years the Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) technology. SPO enables the next generation of space x-ray telescopes, with increased sensitivity and resolution. NewAthena, the New Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics, has just been endorsed by ESA as one of its Lclass mission, to launch around 2037. NewAthena’s optic is modular and consists of up to 600 mirror modules that form together a ~2.5 m diameter X-ray mirror with a focal length of 12 m and an angular resolution of 9 arc-seconds half-energy width. The total polished mirror surface is ~300 m<sup>2</sup>, which will focus X-rays with an energy of about 0.3 – 10 keV onto two detectors, a wild-field imager (WFI) and an imaging spectrometer (XIFU). Building hundreds of such SPO mirror modules in a cost-efficient and timely manner is a formidable task and subject of a dedicated ESA technology development program. <br/> <br/> We present in this paper the status of the optics production and illustrate not only recent X-ray results but also the progress made on the environmental testing, manufacturing and assembly aspects of SPO based optics.
Authors
- Paul Lupton
- Dominique Heinis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2268-0364)
- Bart Schurink (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8332-9930)
- Enrico Hauser (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2939-3098)
- Yvette Jenkins
- Dieter Skroblin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8197-2113)
- Abdelhakim Chatbi
- Giuseppe Vacanti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1943-8152)
- Noë Eenkhoorn
- Luis Abalo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0573-9637)
- Christian Körnig
- Ramses Günther
- Roel Visser (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3144-8046)
- Mark Vervest
- Ronald Start
- Sara Svendsen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8786-3690)
- Maurice Wijnperlé
- A. Moretti (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9770-0315)
- Arenda Koelewijn
- Marcos Bavdaz
- Alejandro Sánchez (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2547-6067)
- Andrew Rees (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0455-5444)
- Paulo da Silva Ribeiro
- D. Sanz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0685-6822)
- Jeroen Haneveld
- Boris Landgraf
- Levent Cibik
- Loes Crama
- Ben Okma
- Desirée Della Monica Ferreira (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4003-3256)
- Mark Olde Riekerink
- Adam Lassise
- Stefano Basso (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2342-5090)
- Luigi Castiglione
- Eric Wille
- David Girou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1062-9390)
- Luc Voruz
- Donny de Borst
- Michael Krumrey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9591-5462)
- Chris Rizos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7276-1488)
- William Mundon
- Bianca Salmaso (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8150-4846)
- Nicolas M. Barrière (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9407-9490)
- Sonny Massahi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5207-1554)
- Finn E. Christensen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5679-1946)
- V. Burwitz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5330-5869)
- Jasper den Hollander
- Sjoerd Verhoeckx
- Maximilien J. Collon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2206-2133)
- Jan-Joost Lankwarden
- Sebastian Obwaller
- Ethan Dunnell
- Norman Niewrzella
- Pieter Smid
- James Harpur
- Daniele Spiga (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1163-7843)
- Alex Bayerle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1084-9724)
- Ivo Ferreira
- Mathijs Bosman
- Laurens Keek
- Robert Fechner
- Carles Colldelram Peroliu
- Aniket Thete
Institutions
- Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (DE)
- ALBA Synchrotron (Spain) (ES)
- Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (DE)
- Teledyne e2v (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Micronit Microfluidics (Netherlands) (NL)
- Cosine (Netherlands) (NL)
- European Space Research and Technology Centre (NL)
- Technical University of Denmark (DK)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2024-08-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3019675
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.66