Announcing the International X-ray Observatory
1 August 2008
At a bilateral ESA-NASA meeting held on 15-16 July, 2008, David Southwood, the ESA Director for the Science and Robotic Exploration Program, and Ed Weiler, the NASA Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, endorsed a plan to establish an International X-ray Observatory (IXO) study.The IXO study will be the input to the ESA selection for the Cosmic Vision Plan and to the US decadal process and supersedes the ongoing XEUS and Constellation-X activities.
This development was announced to the Constellation-X and XEUS teams by Hideyo Kunieda (JAXA), Arvind Parmar (ESA) and Nicholas White (NASA). The text of this letter is available from the link on the right-hand menu.
Further details will be presented and discussed at planned upcoming meetings including the NASA IXO (previously Con-X) FST meeting on 20-22 August at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and the ESA IXO (previously XEUS) workshop at MPE in Garching on 17-19 September. These are open meetings and scientists from Europe, Japan and the US are encouraged to attend both meetings.