XEUS - The X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy Mission
/ Authors
A. Parmar, T. Peacock, Marcos Bavdaz, G. Hasinger, M. Arnaud, X. Barcons, Didier Barret, A. Blanchard, H. Böhringer, M. Cappi
and 12 more authors
A. Comastri, T. Courvoisier, A. Fabian, Richard N. Griffiths, P. Malaguti, K. O. Mason, Takeshi Ohashi, F. Paerels, L. Piro, J. H. M. M. Schmitt, M. Klis, Michael J Ward
/ Abstract
XEUS is under study by ESA as part of the Horizon 2000+ program to utilize the International Space Station (ISS) for astronomical applications. XEUS will be a long-term X-ray observatory with an initial mirror area of 6m2 at 1 keV that will be grown to 30m2 following a visit to the ISS. The 1 keV spatial resolution is expected to be 2-5'' HEW. XEUS will consist of separate detector and mirror spacecraft aligned by active control to provide a focal length of 50m. A new detector spacecraft, complete with the next generation of instruments, will also be added after visiting the ISS. The limiting sensitivity will then be ~4 10-18 erg/cm2/s - around 250 times better than XMM, allowing XEUS to study the properties of the hot baryons and dark matter at high redshift.
Journal: Storage and Retrieval for Image and Video Databases