China to Launch Einstein Probe in 2023 to Observe Violent Cosmic Events
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China to launch Einstein Probe in 2023 to observe violent cosmic events - SpaceNews:
A Chinese wide-field x-ray space observatory has passed a major review and is expected to launch next year to detect flashes from cataclysmic cosmic events.
The Einstein Probe is expected to launch around mid-2023 to observe distant, violent interactions such as tidal disruption events-in which stars are pulled apart by supermassive black holes-supernovae, and detect and localize the high-energy, electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave events.
A March 25 review session organized by the National Space Science Center (NSSC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) approved the mission to proceed to the spacecraft assembly, integration and testing phase, ahead of an expected launch next year.
The roughly 1,400-kilogram spacecraft will be launched into a 600-kilometer altitude, low inclination orbit. From there it will observe the sky with a Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) with a field of view of 3,600 square degrees, using cutting edge "lobster eye" optics to allow the probe to view X-ray events more widely than previously possible.
The spacecraft will feature onboard data processing and autonomous followup capabilities, meaning the probe's Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT), developed in Europe, can be quickly brought to bear after WXT detects an X-ray event.
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