Europe plans to build world's biggest X-ray telescope

This is from: SPACEFLIGHT NOW - an online magazine of current space exploration news

A half-year after the European Space Agency formally prioritized high-energy astrophysics for its next flagship-class science mission, officials announced Friday the selection of a European-led X-ray observatory named Athena for launch in 2028.

Artist's concept of the Athena spacecraft. Credit: Athena project team

 

The huge telescope will replace ESA's XMM-Newton mission and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, collecting data on the interplay between matter and black holes, halos of enigmatic hot gas enveloping faraway galaxies, distant gamma-ray bursts, and other phenomena.

Athena will see objects fainter than XMM-Newton or Chandra, and it is the only X-ray telescope in its class slated for launch in the 2020s, ensuring high demand for Athena's data haul, according to scientists.

The telescope will launch on a heavy-lifting rocket, possibly Europe's Ariane 5, and fly to the gravity-stable L2 Lagrange point a million miles from Earth for a five-year mission.

Athena will weigh about five metric tons, or about 11,000 pounds, at launch. Its telescope will measure about 12 meters, or 39 feet, long with ultra-lightweight silicon pore optics, a new technology comprising stacks of silicon wafers to reflect high-energy X-ray light to the mission's two instruments.

Missions like Athena must launch into space to see the universe in X-rays, which are absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, rendering observations from the ground impossible.

Athena will look back in time to observe how galaxies and galactic clusters assembled a few billion years after the Big Bang, according to the mission's backers.

The telescope will also resolve the flows of matter falling into black holes, contribute to exoplanet research, and survey the wider universe to map large-scale cosmic structures.

"Athena will be a state-of-the-art observatory that will provide a significant leap forward in scientific capabilities compared with previous X-ray missions, and will address fundamental open questions in astrophysics," said Alvaro Gimenez, ESA's director of science and robotic exploration. "Its selection ensures that Europe's success in the field of X-ray astronomy is maintained far beyond the lifetime of our flagship observatory XMM-Newton."

Officials announced in November that the next two large-class missions in Europe's Cosmic Vision program would be an X-ray telescope and a mission to confirm the existence of gravitational waves.

The Cosmic Vision program is a strategic architecture for the selection of Europe's space science missions through a judicious process involving proposals, reviews and recommendations by the European research community.

But the November decision in favor of X-ray and gravity wave missions did not come with a selection of specific mission concepts.

For the first large-class, or L1, Cosmic Vision mission, ESA is working on an orbiter to be launched to Jupiter in June 2022.

ESA's Science Program Committee last week signed off on the Athena mission for the L2 opportunity, and an endorsement of a concept for the L3 gravity wave research mission will come in 2020, with launch to follow in 2034.

Athena was the only proposal submitted for consideration by the committee, officials said.

Next comes detailed study and definition phases to mature technologies required for the Athena mission.

ESA will also begin negotiations with potential partners, such as the United States and Japan, to contribute to the Athena mission. NASA officials have already stated their interest to provide components for Athena's scientific sensors.

European Space Agency officials will meet again around 2019 for formal adoption of the Athena mission, setting a budget, plan and other details before industry begins construction of the spacecraft and its instruments.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Another Look at Orion Spacecraft at NASA

The Orion spacecraft is the new big project under development. The US government had cold feet about expense for some time and probably still does - understandably. The costs of building such a spacecraft must be colossal and the US electorate would want their taxes spent elsewhere. 

However, funding from private enterprise could be the answer as many firms re-invest in such a project to get their own space ideas into the cosmos and onto Mars. Private enterprise is beginning to find advantages in space exploration.

CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI.)

CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI.)

There are small remote-controlled research spacecraft known as CubeSats. They are nano-satellites. These little cube-shaped outposts get released into orbit and are no more than half the size of a shoebox. This is a U-1 CubeSat but they can be clipped together. Two or three together may contain more monitoring and comlinks. Thus we get U-2 or U-3, depending on how many are clipped together.

Multiple CubeSats are stored in a large container that is attached to the main launch vehicle when it goes into space. This holder acts like a giant candy tin called a Nanosatellite Launch Adaptor System (NLAS.) When it opens, one can imagine these small CubeSats being released like sweets from a tube. They float out over the stratosphere or where ever else the project owner might wish them to go.

CubeSats have been used to patrol around space stations or satellites. They search for malfunctions or other damage. They can gently breeze the length of solar panels and check all is well, even report minor irregularities that can be tackled promptly, in case a fault becomes more substantial.

Now NASA has a programme called CubeSat Launch Initiative (CSLI.) This innovative idea allows free-thinking projects within CubeSats. These projects are independent but hitch a ride, into space, upon a NASA rocket launch. A room for passengers appeals where space exploration is concerned.

Once in space, the NLAS releases its CubeSat passengers out and into orbit. Off they go on their own little adventures, leaving the NASA magic bus to do its own thing, while the little CubeSat goes about its self-indulgent quest for knowledge, in a field of its owner’s choosing. It might take photographs of Earth to study weather conditions, scan space for asteroids, survey the moon, Mars, Venus, or watch material test samples in a space vacuum. There are all sorts of things. These little undertakings can be controlled from a university classroom by students on Earth.

For a university to win the prized chance of controlling a CubeSat, they have to pass stringent tests via NASA monitors who judge each project for viability. The agency gets to filter the financially lucrative bidders for the choice of those most useful on the knowledge acquisition front. This is because NASA will have access to all information gathered before the reports go down to the students in control of the CubeSat project.

There are many CubeSats in orbit already and a growing number of projects waiting in line. NASA will be paid for getting this free information as a transport provider for independent CubeSats, which are just paying passengers on the main launch project.

Everyone wins when this experimental information starts to come in. The CubeSat can cost between $65,000 and $80,000. If there is a launch that can carry four or five CubeSats, NASA gets a little of the cost back towards the main mission and a potential amount of updated and free information. It also ensures that they have a growing and enthusiastic candidates for future space exploration technology.

These delightful little parasitical spacecraft will develop over the decades and all launches might be able to lower funding costs by accommodating CubeSat projects. NASA may find ways to lower costs of building launch projects too, especially developing re-usable craft like the Orion MPCV. Every time an Orion launch goes up it will have CubeSat minor projects paying for a lift. Depending on how many CubeSat projects at $65,000 + it can get aboard; could re-launchable MPCV claw back substantial finances against original costs of building main launch projects in the future.

Imagine the return in the shape of these four-inch cubes. Not to forget long term and constant free information updates. NASA has stumbled upon a large number of independent projects lining up to be selected and waiting to hand over their money to get a CubeSat into space.

How long before large multi-corporate organisations offer large sums of money for their own space exploration tests, lowering the cost on the US taxpayer? Space exploration will cast away all national industry commitment and begin to pay for itself. Privatisation, once again, paves the way.

Orion - Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (The Next Adaptation of Manned Space Craft)

The Orion Multi-Purpose CrewVehicle is the new exciting project in manned space exploration. It is the next advancement from the space shuttle. This is so that crew and space vehicle can go beyond low orbit and further into space – much further. The ambitions for Mutli-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) are very exciting. With this new innovation astronauts will go beyond space stations orbiting Earth and travel to the Moon, explore asteroids and of course Mars - mankind’s new goal and next giant step.

There will be several of these special adapted space craft built. For NASA the Orion MPCV will be built by the famous Lockheed Martin group. For the European Space Agency, the MPCV will be constructed by a group called Astrium. Each spacecraft will carry four or more astronauts and various cargoes to deliver to space station construction sites or other more adventurous destinations as mentioned already.

The first flights are scheduled to launch aboard a Delta IV rocket for an exploration test journey in 2014 with the first manned mission in 2020.

China Space Programme - Manned Rocket

China is set to send maned rocket into space as the new emerging superpower gets well and truly into the space exploration programme.