14 DAY TRIAL // Experts with the European Space Agency (ESA) will soon decide on which proposal to turn into their next flagship mission. One of the contestants is the Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics (Athena+) concept, a large X-ray telescope to survey the energetic Universe.
The reason why Athena+ may be more important than other mission candidates is that it would cover a gap in high-energy astrophysics, scheduled to occur beyond 2020. At that time, the vast majority of X-ray telescopes currently orbiting Earth will have already shut down. Observing the Cosmos at these wavelengths requires a spacecraft, and cannot be done from Earth.
The project is being championed by scientists with the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in Germany, including expert Kirpal Nandra. He believes that ESA officials need to act decisively in this matter, in order to avoid an international hiatus in high-energy physics research. The first deadline in this process is at the end of this month.
Some of the candidates for the two launch opportunities ESA announced (2028 and 2034), include an orbiter destined for Titan, a spacecraft to study the Saturnine moons Neptune and Triton, as well as an infrared observatory. The competition Athena+ faces is therefore very stiff.
The new observatory would be based on the ESA XMM-Newton telescope, but its design would be significantly more advanced. However, the European space agency would have to support all the costs associated with this mission, since NASA's financial woes are growing worse.
According to the concept proposal, the telescope would be lighter and bigger than XMM-Newton, measuring up to 12 meters (39.4 feet) in length. If approved, Athena+ will have to fit into the payload fairing of an Atlas V delivery system, the largest rocket ESA has access to.
The observatory will be outfitted with a high-sensitivity imager named CALLED – which is not limited to a narrow field-of-view – and with a new type of detector called the X-Ray Integral Fiel Unit, which is sensitive enough to detect single X-ray photons.
Athena+ will try to answer some important questions related to how matter assembled in the large-scale cosmic structures we see today, how black holes appeared and shaped the Universe, how they produce winds and outflows, and many more.
“If Athena doesn't go forward, we won't have any X-ray eyes out there looking at the hot parts of the universe, or the energetic parts of the universe, in the 2020s,” Nandra says, quoted by Space.
The entire proposal is available here.