Mechanical overview of the International X-ray Observatory

Author

Robinson, David W. ; McClelland, Ryan S.

Author_Institution

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD

fYear

2009

fDate

7-14 March 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

10

Abstract

The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) is a new collaboration between NASA, ESA, and JAXA which is under study for launch in 2020. IXO will be a large 6600 kilogram Great Observatory-class mission which will build upon the legacies of the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories. It combines elements from NASA´s Constellation-X program and ESA´s XEUS program. The observatory will have a 20-25 meter focal length, which necessitates the use of a deployable instrument module. Currently the project is actively trading configurations and layouts of the various instruments and spacecraft components. This paper will provide a snapshot of the latest observatory configuration under consideration and summarize the observatory from the mechanical engineering perspective.

Keywords

aerospace industry; astronomical observatories; space vehicles; NASA constellation-X program; deployable instrument module; great observatory-class mission; international X-ray observatory; spacecraft components; Assembly; Earth; Instruments; International collaboration; Mirrors; NASA; Observatories; Rockets; Space vehicles; Sun;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace conference, 2009 IEEE

Conference_Location

Big Sky, MT

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2621-8

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-2622-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AERO.2009.4839581

Filename

4839581