Meet Athena: ESA's future largest X-ray observatory to study black holes

The European Space Agency's future X-ray observatory, Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (Athena), will observe hundreds of thousands of black holes, and map the million-degree-hot matter in their surroundings.

Destined to be the world's largest X-ray observatory, Athena is currently in the study phase and is planned to launch in the mid-2030s. The observatory will be launched to a halo orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system (L2).

According to ESA, the Athena scientific payload will have three key elements - an X-ray telescope an X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) for high-spectral resolution imaging and a Wide Field Imager (WFI) for high count rate, moderate-resolution spectroscopy.

Together with the agency's forthcoming gravitational-wave observatory, Laser Interferometer Space Antenna or LISA, Athena will unveil new clues about distant and merging black holes, bright quasars in active galaxies, rapid jets believed to be produced around spinning black holes, the cosmic distance scale, and the speed of gravity.

Meet #Athena – destined to be the world's largest X-ray observatory. Due to launch in mid-2030s to investigate the hot & energetic Universe⚡️Athena will observe 100s of 1000s of #BlackHoles⚫️ incl. many formed when the Universe was young👉 https://t.co/aYcraXffn8#BlackHoleWeek pic.twitter.com/4mTCVTEM97

— ESA Science (@esascience) May 3, 2022

The X-ray observatory will perform around 300 observations of strong X-ray sources per year to address key questions in astrophysics - How and why does ordinary matter assemble into the galaxies, galaxy groups and galaxy clusters that we see today? and How do black holes grow and shape the Universe?

More information about the mission can be found here.