Kavli Affiliate: Kent Irwin
| First 5 Authors: Philippe Peille, Didier Barret, Edoardo Cucchetti, Vincent Albouys, Luigi Piro
| Summary:
The Athena mission entered a redefinition phase in July 2022, driven by the
imperative to reduce the mission cost at completion for the European Space
Agency below an acceptable target, while maintaining the flagship nature of its
science return. This notably called for a complete redesign of the X-ray
Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) cryogenic architecture towards a simpler active
cooling chain. Passive cooling via successive radiative panels at spacecraft
level is now used to provide a 50 K thermal environment to an X-IFU owned
cryostat. 4.5 K cooling is achieved via a single remote active cryocooler unit,
while a multi-stage Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator ensures heat lift
down to the 50 mK required by the detectors. Amidst these changes, the core
concept of the readout chain remains robust, employing Transition Edge Sensor
microcalorimeters and a SQUID-based Time-Division Multiplexing scheme.
Noteworthy is the introduction of a slower pixel. This enables an increase in
the multiplexing factor (from 34 to 48) without compromising the instrument
energy resolution, hence keeping significant system margins to the new 4 eV
resolution requirement. This allows reducing the number of channels by more
than a factor two, and thus the resource demands on the system, while keeping a
4′ field of view (compared to 5′ before). In this article, we will give an
overview of this new architecture, before detailing its anticipated
performances. Finally, we will present the new X-IFU schedule, with its short
term focus on demonstration activities towards a mission adoption in early
2027.
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