New XRISM satellite mission to study ‘rainbow’ of X-rays

A brand new satellite referred to as XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, pronounced “crism”) goals to pry aside high-energy mild into the equal of an X-ray rainbow. The mission, led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Company), will do that utilizing an instrument referred to as Resolve.

XRISM is scheduled to launch from Japan’s Tanegashima Area Middle on Aug. 25, 2023 (Aug. 26 in Japan).

“Resolve will give us a brand new look into a number of the universe’s most energetic objects, together with black holes, clusters of galaxies, and the aftermath of stellar explosions,” mentioned Richard Kelley, NASA’s XRISM principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’ll be taught extra about how they behave and what they’re made from utilizing the info the mission collects after launch.”

Resolve is an X-ray microcalorimeter spectrometer instrument collaboration between NASA and JAXA. It measures tiny temperature modifications created when an X-ray hits its 6-by-6-pixel detector. To measure that minuscule enhance and decide the X-ray’s energy, the detector wants to chill all the way down to round minus 460 Fahrenheit (minus 270 Celsius), only a fraction of a level above absolute zero.

The instrument reaches its operating temperature after a multistage mechanical cooling course of inside a refrigerator-sized container of liquid helium.

By amassing hundreds and even hundreds of thousands of X-rays from a cosmic supply, Resolve can measure high-resolution spectra of the item. Spectra are measurements of sunshine’s depth over a variety of energies. Prisms unfold seen mild into its completely different energies, which we all know higher as the colours of the rainbow. Scientists used prisms in early spectrometers to search for spectral lines, which happen when atoms or molecules take up or emit vitality.

Now astronomers use spectrometers, tuned to every kind of sunshine, to find out about cosmic objects’ bodily states, motions, and compositions. Resolve will do spectroscopy for X-rays with energies starting from 400 to 12,000 electron volts by measuring the energies of particular person X-rays to type a spectrum. (For comparability, visible light energies vary from about 2 to three electron volts.)

“The spectra XRISM collects would be the most detailed we have ever seen for a number of the phenomena we’ll observe,” mentioned Brian Williams, NASA’s XRISM mission scientist at Goddard. “The mission will present us with insights into a number of the most tough locations to review, like the interior constructions of neutron stars and near-light-speed particle jets powered by black holes in lively galaxies.”

The mission’s different instrument, developed by JAXA, known as Xtend. It is going to give XRISM one of many largest fields of view of any X-ray imaging satellite flown so far, observing an space about 60% bigger than the typical obvious measurement of the total Moon.

Resolve and Xtend depend on two similar X-ray Mirror Assemblies developed at Goddard.

XRISM is a collaborative mission between JAXA and NASA, with participation by ESA (European Area Company). NASA’s contribution consists of science participation from the Canadian Area Company.