RT Journal Article
T1 The X-ray integral field unit at the end of the Athena reformulation phase
A1 Peille, Philippe
A1 Barret, Didier
A1 Cucchetti, Edoardo
A1 Albouys, Vincent
A1 Piro, Luigi
A1 Simionescu, Aurora
A1 Cappi, Massimo
A1 Bellouard, Elise
A1 Cardiel López, Nicolás
A1 Woźniak, Grzegorz
AB The Athena mission entered a redefinition phase in July 2022, driven by the imperative to reduce the mission cost at completion for the European Space Agency below an acceptable target, while maintaining the flagship nature of its science return. This notably called for a complete redesign of the X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) cryogenic architecture towards a simpler active cooling chain. Passive cooling via successive radiative panels at spacecraft level is now used to provide a 50K thermal environment to an X-IFU owned cryostat. 4.5K cooling is achieved via a single remote active cryocooler unit, while a multi-stage Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator ensures heat lift down to the 50mK required by the detectors. Amidst these changes, the core concept of the readout chain remains robust, employing Transition Edge Sensor microcalorimeters and a SQUID-based Time-Division Multiplexingscheme. Noteworthy is the introduction of a slower pixel. This enables an increase in the multiplexing factor (from 34 to 48) without compromising the instrument energy resolution, hence keeping significant system margins to the new 4 eV resolution requirement. This allows reducing the number of channels by more than a factor two, and thus the resource demands on the system, while keeping a 4’ field of view (compared to 5’ before). In this article, we will give an overview of this new architecture, before detailing its anticipated performances. Finally, we will present the new X-IFU schedule, with its short term focus on demonstration activities towards a mission adoption in early 2027.
PB Springer
SN 0922-6435
YR 2025
FD 2025
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/123108
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/123108
LA eng
NO Peille, P., Barret, D., Cucchetti, E., Albouys, V., Piro, L., Simionescu, A., ... & Bruijn, M. (2025). The X-ray Integral Field Unit at the end of the Athena reformulation phase. Experimental Astronomy, 59(2), 1-36.
NO Artículo firmado por 282 autores
NO ASI (Italian Space Agency)
NO Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España)
NO ERDF "A way of making Europe"
DS Docta Complutense
RD 28 dic 2025