WASHINGTON — NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA will start work this spring on an orbiting X-ray astronomy telescope to replace one lost shortly after launch last year.In a presentation to the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics of the National Academies March 28, Paul Hertz, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said a formal start of the project known as the X-Ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM) will take place shortly after the start of the new Japanese fiscal year April 1.“We are moving forward with the X-Ray Astronomy Recovery Mission,” Hertz said. The mission, he said, was included in the Japanese government’s budget for the new fiscal year, pending approval by the country’s parliament, the Diet.
Missions of opportunityESA will also participate in Japan’s X-ray Astronomy Recovery Mission (XARM), designed to recover the science of the Hitomi satellite that was lost shortly after launch last year.
“The mission will not be a carbon copy (of Hitomi), but the NASA contribution will be a carbon copy,” Hertz said in an interview. “The XARM mission is going to have only two of the four instruments that Hitomi had. It will have the Soft X-ray Spectrometer and the Soft X-ray Imager. The latter is a JAXA instrument, but we provided the telescope for both of those.”XARM will not need an extendable 20-foot (6-metre) boom like Hitomi, Hertz said, because it will fly without the hard X-ray instruments that needed the deployable arm. Hard X-rays are at the higher-energy, shorter-wavelength end of the spectrum of X-ray light.“That makes it a simpler mission, so although our part will be built-to-print, there will obviously be some changes on the bus,” Hertz said.The Soft X-ray Imager on XARM will also have improved resolution over the instrument on Hitomi, JAXA officials said.JAXA managers said NASA’s NuSTAR telescope, which sees the universe in hard X-rays, could fill in for the missing high-energy instruments on XARM. The two observatories could conduct coordinated, tandem observations to help realize Hitomi’s original science objectives.NASA will spend between $70 million and $90 million on its part of the XARM observatory, according to Hertz. Flight spares at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center from the original Hitomi development will help save some money, he said.The European Space Agency is also a minor partner in Hitomi’s replacement mission.
After the loss of ASTRO-H, JAXA conducted a thorough mishap investigation, and derived an extensive list of lessons learned. These lessons are being rigorously employed in the development of the new X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM). Building on the successes of the ASTRO-H mission, XRISM will perform the high-resolution X-ray spectroscopic observations of the hot gas plasma wind that blows through the galaxies in the universe. These observations will enable us to determine flows of mass and energy, revealing the composition and evolution of celestial objects. This innovative, JAXA-led international project will be developed in collaboration with NASA, ESA, and other highly-qualified partners. XRISM will carry forward the ambitions and successes of ASTRO-H, and will deliver the highly-anticipated scientific results to the world.
X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) (formerly XARM)The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) is a JAXA/NASA collaborative mission, with ESA participation. The objective of the mission is to investigate celestial X-ray objects in the Universe with high-throughput imaging and high-resolution spectroscopy. XRISM is expected to launch in 2021 (TBR) on a JAXA H-2A rocket.The XRISM payload consists of two instruments:- Resolve, a soft X-ray spectrometer, which combines a lightweight X-Ray Mirror Assembly paired with an X-ray calorimeter spectrometer, and provides non-dispersive 5-7 eV energy resolution in the 0.3-12 keV bandpass with a field of view of about 3 arcmin.- Xtend, a soft X-ray imager, is a CCD detector that extends the field of the observatory to 38 arcmin over the energy range 0.4-13 keV, using an identical lightweight X-Ray Mirror Assembly.Their characteristics are similar to the SXS and SXI respectively flown on Hitomi and XRISM is designed to resume with most of the the science capability lost with the Hitomi mishap.NASA/GSFC develops the Resolve detector system and many of its subsystems together with the X-Ray Mirror Assembles. NASA/GSFC also has responsibility for the Science Data Center charter to develop the analysis software for all instruments, the data processing pipeline as well as to support Guest Observers and the XRISM Guest Observer Program.
During the ESA Council meeting in Darmstadt, ESA Director General Jan Wörner and President Yamakawa signed an agreement on XRISM – the X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission – which will study extremely energetic phenomena in the Universe.XRISM will be launched in the early 2020s from the Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, with hardware components and support for science management and planning provided by ESA. In return, ESA will be granted observation time, to be allocated to scientists affiliated to institutions in ESA Member States.
Japan’s X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), for which NASA is contributing instruments, is also facing a delay, but not entirely because of the pandemic. Hertz said that while the NASA-contributed hardware remains on schedule, a Dewar that holds liquid helium to cool the instruments has developed a leak. NASA personnel have traveled to Japan to assist in troubleshooting the problem, which he said was the first international travel approved by the agency since the onset of the pandemic in March.That technical issue will delay the launch of XRISM, which was previously scheduled for early 2022, but Hertz said the Japanese space agency JAXA has not yet set a new launch date.
The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) is an X-ray observatory, which is the 7th in the series of the X-ray observatories from Japan. The mission of XRISM is to recover and resume the study of the prime objective of ASTRO-H/Hitomi “to solve outstanding astrophysical questions with high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy”. It is currently planned to be launched in FY2022 with an HII-A rocket from the Tanegashima Space Center, Kagoshima, Japan.
“In May, the spacecraft components – including its two instruments, named Resolve and Xtend – were mechanically and electrically integrated onto the observatory for the first time,” said Project Manager Lillian Reichenthal at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This was a significant milestone in the development of the spacecraft for JAXA.”Having all of the systems installed initiates a new round of spacecraft testing to ensure everything works well together. Engineers integrate and test the equipment at different stages – first individual components, then assembled systems and instruments, and finally the full observatory. These tests subject the spacecraft and instruments to the conditions expected during launch and space operations.In another milestone, testing and calibration of two identical, Goddard-built X-ray Mirror Assemblies (XMAs) was completed, and the mirrors were shipped to Japan in late May and early June. The XMAs underwent separate environmental testing and will receive their final optical alignment before being installed on each instrument in the fall.The Resolve instrument will precisely measure low-energy X-rays to extract information about the physical state and motion of ionized gases associated with supernova remnants, galaxy clusters, and outflows streaming from supermassive black holes in active galaxies. The Xtend instrument, detecting X-rays of similar energy, will produce images with a field of view about 150 times larger than Resolve, extending XRISM’s cosmic grasp.“The science from XRISM will be extraordinary,” said Goddard’s Brian Williams, the NASA project scientist for the mission. “The Resolve instrument promises to open a new window on the high-energy universe.” Resolve’s detector system was also developed at Goddard.XRISM is expected to launch in 2023 on a JAXA HII-A rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center.
[Progress report] Vibration test (left photo) and Acoustic test (right photo) at the JAXA Tsukuba Space Center in last December. These tests to confirm that the spacecraft can withstand severe vibrations and sounds of rocket launch has been successfully completed.
European contributions: Europe’s contribution consists of loop heat pipes for XRISM’s Resolve instrument, star trackers, magnetic torquers and geomagnetic aspect sensors. Additionally, the University of Geneva in Switzerland and SRON in the Netherlands developed a filter wheel mechanism and electronics including high-voltage power sources and calibration sources. In consideration of these contributions, up to 8% of the mission’s total Guest Observing Time will be allocated to ESA.
✨ Great news! 🛰️ Solar acquisition control - ✅, Data received at Uchinoura station - ✅, Solar array paddle deployment - ✅. XRISM is on track! 🚀 #JAXA #SpaceMission #SolarPower
