Suzaku
(Astro-E2)
Launched: 10 July 2005
Site: Uchinoura
Space Centre, Japan
Launcher: M-5
Orbit: LEO, apogee: km, 560 perigee:
560 km: inclination: 31.4°
International Number: 2005-025A
Name:
Suzaku (Astro-E2)
Owner: ISAS
Contractor: ISAS
Sazuka (called
Astro-E2 before launch) is a Japanese X-ray astronomy observatory. It replaces
Astro-E which was destroyed during a launch failure in February 2000.
Astro-E2's primary instrument is the high-resolution X-ray Spectrometer (XRS),
developed jointly by GSFC and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS). The XRS measures the heat
created by the individual X-ray photons (light particles) it collects.
To sense the heat of a single photon, the XRS detector must be cooled to an
extremely low temperature, approximately - 460 degrees Fahrenheit. The coldest
reaches of space are approximately -454 degrees Fahrenheit. This will make the
XRS colder than space. Using this new technique, scientists can measure higher
X-ray energies with a precision about ten times greater than with previous
sensors.
"Astro-E2 will showcase an entirely new technology that will
not only serve as a test bed for future missions but produce some spectacular
science to boot," said Dr. Anne Kinney, director of the Universe Division in
NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "This is the highly anticipated complement
to NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Europe's XMM-Newton. Scientists around
the world eagerly await the launch," she added.
Astro-E2 will study
black holes and the creation of chemical elements necessary for life. Key
targets include hot gas falling toward black holes; the million-degree ejecta
of star explosions filled with newly minted elements such as oxygen and
calcium; and the optically invisible gas between stars and galaxies, which
comprise most of the ordinary mass in the universe.
"Incoming light
particles will raise the temperature of the detector by only a few thousandths
of a degree," said Dr. Richard Kelley, Principal Investigator for the U.S.
contribution to Astro-E2. "Knowing the precise energy that these light
particles carry, we can infer new information about their origins," he
added.
Along with the XRS are four X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS)
instruments, a collaboration among Japanese institutions and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; and the Hard X- Ray Detector (HXD), built by the
University of Tokyo, ISAS and other Japanese institutions.
The XRS and
XIS instruments will analyze X-ray photons focused by five 0.4 metre diameter
X-ray telescopes (one for the XRS and one for each XIS instrument), built at
GSFC by a team led by Dr. Peter Serlemitsos. The HXD also uses a tested and
improved technology.
The observatory's expected mission lifetime is
five years.
(source: JAXA, NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center)