MPE will provide the X-ray Survey Telescope eROSITA [5] for the Russian Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma Mission [4] to be launched in 2011. The design of the X-ray mirror system is based on that of ABRIXAS: The bundle of 7 mirror modules with the short focal length of 1600 mm makes it still a compact instrument while, however, its sensitivity in terms of effective area, field-of-view, and angular resolution shall be largely enhanced with respect to ABRIXAS. The number of nested mirror shells increases from 27 to 54 compared to ABRIXAS thus enhancing the effective area in the soft band by a factor of six. The angular resolution is targeted to be 15 arc seconds half-energy width (HEW) on-axis resulting in an average HEW of 26 arc seconds over the 61 arc minutes field-of-view (FoV). The instrument's high grasp of about 1000 cm 2 deg 2 in the soft spectral range and still 10 cm 2 deg 2 at 10 keV combined with a survey duration of 4 years will generate a new rich database of X-ray sources over the whole sky. As the 7 mirror modules are co-aligned eROSITA is also able to perform pointed observations.
Optical design relies on ray tracing to evaluate and optimize the performance of optical systems. Differential ray tracing, in which the ray properties are calculated together with their derivatives, has been shown to be of interest to improve the accuracy and speed of common optical design tasks. We present in this paper an algorithm capable of performing differential ray tracing in the general case. This algorithm is not constrained by a specific optical system geometry such as rotational symmetry or restricted to a set of surface definitions (e.g., conics, polynomial aspheres).
Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) is a lightweight high performance X-ray optics technology being developed in Europe, driven by applications in observatory class high energy astrophysics missions. An example of such application is the former ESA science mission candidate ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics), which uses the SPO technology for its two telescopes, in order to provide an effective area exceeding 1 m 2 at 1 keV, and 0.5 m 2 at 6 keV, featuring an angular resolution of 10" or better [1 to 24]. This paper reports on the development activities led by ESA, and the status of the SPO technology. The technology development programme has succeeded in maturing the SPO further and achieving important milestones, in each of the main activity streams: environmental compatibility, industrial production and optical performance. In order to accurately characterise the increasing performance of this innovative optical technology, the associated X-ray test facilities and beam-lines have been refined and upgraded. THE CHALLENGE OF THE NEXT GENERATIONThe currently operating X-ray observatories are technological masterpieces, and the usefulness to science is evident in the prolific publication record that they have generated. These missions required significant investments, and each required the technologies used on-board to be brought to a high level of sophistication. The XMM-Newton and Chandra observatories [25,26] have been serving the science community for well over a decade. The science that they produced has generated many new questions, which for their resolution will require even more capable space observatories.In parallel, the sensitivity of observatories is constantly increasing over the whole width of the remainder electromagnetic spectrum, from the radio, over the sub-mm and infrared, to the visible and UV. The development of equipment on ground is truly impressive, and will allow unprecedented depth of observations, detecting unseen details and providing superb spectroscopic and angular resolution. With the addition of the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) [27], the study of the Universe, including its early phases, will certainly experience a significant progress. Complementary observations in the high energy area will become increasingly important.The next generation X-ray observatories will therefore have to be much more capable than the current ones, but at the same time they will not be in the position to rely on increased resource budgets. The challenge of the next generation Xray observatories has to rely on new technologies, which will increase the performance both on the optics and on the instrument side.
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