ESA assessment study activities on the International X-ray Observatory
Publication date: 22 July 2010
Authors: Rando, N., et al.
Journal: SPIE Proceedings
Year: 2010
Copyright: SPIE
The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is an L class mission candidate within the science programme Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 of the European Space Agency, with a planned launch by 2020. IXO is an international cooperative project, pursued by ESA, JAXA and NASA. By allowing astrophysical observations between 100 eV and 40 keV, IXO would represent the new generation X-ray observatory, following the XMM-Newton, Astro-H and Chandra heritage. The IXO mission concept is based on a single aperture telescope with an external diameter of about 3.5 m, a focal length of 20 m and a number of focal plane instruments, positioned at the focal point via a movable platform. A grating spectrometer, enabling parallel measurements, is also included in the model payload. Two parallel competitive industrial assessment studies are being carried out by ESA on the overall IXO mission, while the instruments are being studied by dedicated instrument consortia. The main results achieved during this study are summarised in this paper which was presented at the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2010 conference.
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