Mission Status
The International X-ray Observatory is an X-ray telescope with joint participation from the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA, and Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The project supersedes both ESA's XEUS and NASA's Constellation-X mission concepts.
XEUS: An X-ray observatory in the Cosmic Vision Programme
The XEUS mission was proposed as an L-class candidate mission for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme in response to the Call for Proposals issued by ESA in March 2007. In October 2007 XEUS was selected for further assessment and consideration.
The ESA internal assessment phase, or phase 0, for all candidate missions began in November 2007. The CDF study for XEUS, part of this phase 0 process, ran from June 2008 to July 2008.
IXO: a new concept for the X-ray observatory
Following discussions involving ESA, NASA and JAXA the XEUS mission concept was merged with the Constellation-X concept (NASA) into the International X-ray Observatory (IXO). After this merger a CDF study was performed for IXO which ran from October 2008 to November 2008.
In the first half of 2009 the Invitation to Tender is planned to be issued to Industry, resulting in parallel industrial assessment studies that will run for approximately 18 months. These studies are expected to be completed by the end of 2010.
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Last Update: 06 Jan 2009
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