Speaker
Description
NewAthena will be the European Space Agency’s next large X-ray observatory. It will have revolutionary capabilities enabled by the combination of a large collecting-area mirror, a high-resolution spatially resolved X-ray integral-field spectrometer, and a wide-field X-ray imager. This next-generation observatory will thus enable transformational progress across all areas of astrophysics. NewAthena is the second L-class mission in ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, expected to undergo formal adoption by ESA in 2027 and then enter the implementation phase, with launch planned for ~2039.
This talk will provide an update on the status of the NewAthena study phase. I will highlight plans for the next generation of large-area X-ray sky surveys using NewAthena's Wide-Field Imager, and I will discuss the broad range of science that NewAthena will enable – including tracing the growth of supermassive black holes across cosmic time and their impact on galaxy evolution, the assembly of the large-scale structure of the Universe, the stellar lifecycle (and its endpoints), the equation of dense matter in neutron stars, and the astrophysical nature of neutrino and gravitational wave sources.