Particle Physics Division

How Athena became NewAthena

The Athena (Advanced Telescope for High-Energy Astrophysics) mission was proposed in response to ESA's selection of "The Hot and Energetic Universe" as a priority scientific theme within its Cosmic Vision program. In order to keep ESA costs within an acceptable budget, several elements of the Athena mission had to be revised and consolidated to create the NewAthena mission. The main change concerns the design of the cooling chain for the X-IFU instrument, which achieves the same 50 mK performance. A Scientific Redefinition Team (SRDT), made up of 19 scientists, including a member of DAp-AIM/IRFU, was set up in 2022 by ESA to assess their potential scientific impact. Their conclusions, which were very positive, were presented to ESA's scientific advisory structure in October 2023, and the SPC approved the "flaship" status of the NewAthena mission and its development on November 8, 2023.

NewAthena, a telescope with revolutionary performance

NewAthena's performances are revolutionary in terms of sensitivity and spectral resolution compared with existing missions, opening up new, unexplored areas of high-energy astrophysical phenomena. The future European X-ray observatory NewAthena comprises three key elements:

• an X-ray telescope using innovative SPO (Silicon Pore Optics) technology offering large effective area and good spatial resolution (Half Energy Width <10 arcsec);
• a spectro-imager with high spectral resolution (~4 eV), the X-IFU (Integral Field Unit);
• a wide-field spectro-imager (40 arcmin) with moderate spectral resolution (<150 eV), the WFI (Wide Field Imager).