NewAthena
New Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics
NewAthena is an ESA flagship X-ray observatory, providing a huge leap in sensitivity, spectroscopy and survey capabilities with respect to existing facilities. It will address many open questions in modern astrophysics, including the behavior of extremely dense matter in neutron stars, the physics of accretion and ejection onto supermassive black holes and the impact on their host galaxy, and the properties of diffuse intergalactic plasma filling the large-scale cosmic web. The Netherlands has leading contributions to the telescope mirror and to the X-ray Integral Field Unit, the first X-ray imaging camera with high spectral sensitivity to be flown in space.
Infrastructure and User Services
The NewAthena mission includes one innovative X-ray telescope mirror, as well as two focal plane instruments: a wide field X-ray imager (WFI) and an X-ray Integral Field Unit (XIFU) spectrometer. This will be the first X-ray telescope to achieve a mirror area greater than one square meter, thanks to the novel silicon pore optics developed at Cosine in the Netherlands. Moreover, NWO-I/SRON is leading the construction of the focal plane assembly for the XIFU. With over 1500 high spectral resolution pixels, the NewAthena XIFU will be the first camera capable of precise spectral mapping in the X-rays. The telescope is expected to operate for at least 5 years following its launch planned in 2039, though experience with past satellites like Chandra and XMM-Newton (which are still active 25 years after launch) showed that this can be extended significantly.
Users in the Netherlands will have access to NewAthena data in three main ways. First, by submitting observing proposals which are ranked and selected once per year by a peer review panel. Second, through the guaranteed time allotted to all contributing parties (including the Netherlands) in return for the investments in building hardware for the mission. Third, through the ESA archive where all NewAthena data will be made publicly available (following an initial proprietary period of 1 year when the observations are available only to the proposing team).
Examples/description of the type of research
X-ray photons are excellent tracers of high temperature and/or strong gravity environments associated with, for instance, black holes or large overdensities of dark matter. By offering order-of-magnitude improvements in spatial-spectral mapping and sensitivity compared to existing telescopes, NewAthena will allow users to address many open questions in modern astrophysics, including:
• How does the stellar radiation field affect the habitability of planetary systems, and how is it in turn influenced by the presence of nearby planets?
• What is the equation of state regulating matter in neutron stars?
• What is the origin of the high-energy processes in the close environment of black holes?
• How do supernova explosions produce the mixture of chemical elements we measure in the local Universe? How are metals distributed through the cosmos?
• What drives the cosmological co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes?
• How does feedback from stars and black holes shape the large-scale distribution of intergalactic gas?
• How do large-scale structures in the Universe form and evolve? What physics defines their hot gas content?
• What is the astrophysical nature of the most common celestial sources of neutrinos and gravitational waves?
NewAthena observations will be complementary to data collected from facilities operating at other electromagnetic wavelengths, or using multimessenger signals such as neutrinos or gravitational waves, over the next decade and a half.
How to access the infrastructure?
The data will be downloaded from the telescope to Earth and processed, after which it will be available to users through the dedicated ESA archive.