The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) spacecraft Einstein Probe is ready to launch in January 2024. Equipped with a new generation of X-ray instruments with high sensitivity and a very wide view, this mission will survey the sky and hunt for powerful blasts of X-ray light coming from mysterious celestial objects such as neutron stars and black holes.Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) spacecraft Einstein Probe lifted off on a Chang Zheng (Long March) 2C rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in China at 15:03 CST / 07:03 GMT / 08:03 CET on 9 January 2024. With the successful launch, Einstein Probe began its mission to survey the sky and hunt for bursts of X-ray light from mysterious objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
After launch, Einstein Probe reached its orbit at an altitude of approximately 600 km. The spacecraft circles the Earth every 96 minutes with an orbital inclination of 29 degrees and it is able to monitor almost the full night-sky in just three orbits.In the next six months, the operation team will be engaged in testing and calibrating the instruments. After this preparation phase, Einstein Probe will spend at least three years attentively watching the entire X-ray sky.
The first images captured by the innovative mission were presented at the 7th workshop of the Einstein Probe consortium in Beijing. They illustrate the satellite’s full potential and show that its novel optics, which mimic a lobster’s eyes, are ready to monitor the X-ray sky. The space X-ray telescope zoomed in on a few well-known celestial objects to give us a hint of what the mission is capable of.
The new X-ray space telescope Einstein Probe has detected a mysterious, transient celestial object coded EP240408a. On 8 April, #EinsteinProbe recorded the extreme X-ray flare, which increased in brightness by 300 times and lasted for only 12 seconds. The X-ray light from this source disappeared approximately 10 days later 👉https://english.cas.cn/newsroom/cas_media/202411/t20241101_693446.shtmlThe mission is a collaboration led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences with @ESA & @MPE_Garching
China's Einstein Probe (EP) astronomical satellite has identified a new category of cosmic explosions—faint, fast X-ray transients accompanying the death of massive stars. The satellite's first-of-its-kind detection of transient source EP240414a, a mysterious 150-second X-ray flare from a collapsing star 4 billion light-years away, challenges existing theories of stellar demise and reveals a hidden population of stellar explosions. The breakthrough findings appear in Nature Astronomy on June 26, 2025.
Publication Details:Title: "A fast X-ray transient from a weak relativistic jet associated with a type Ic-BL supernova" Journal: Nature Astronomy DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02571-1 Release Date: June 26, 2025
