IXO
Full Name: International X-ray Observatory
Phase: Under study
Mission Project Home Page: http://ixo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Program(s): Physics of the Cosmos
The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is a new X-ray telescope with joint participation from NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). This project supersedes both NASA's Constellation-X and ESA's XEUS mission concepts.
In mid-2008, a officials from ESA, NASA, and JAXA headquarters agreed to conduct a joint study of IXO with a single merged set of top-level science goals. This agreement established key science measurement requirements. The spacecraft configuration for the IXO study is a mission featuring a single large X-ray mirror and an extendible optical bench, with a focal length of (OF) 20 m, and a suite of 6 focal plane instruments.
The instruments under study for the IXO concept include: a wide field X-ray imaging detector, a high-spectral-resolution imaging X-ray spectrometer (calorimeter), a hard X-ray imaging detector, an X-ray grating spectrometer, high timing resolution spectrometer, and an X-ray polarimeter. The IXO mission concept will submitted to the U.S. Decadal Process and ESA's Cosmic Vision Plan.