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XMM-Newton
Science & Exploration

XMM-Newton factsheet

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ESA / Science & Exploration / Space Science / XMM-Newton

On 10 December 1999 at 14:32 GMT the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory was launched and started exploring the wonders of the X-ray Universe. Since its launch, XMM-Newton has simultaneously collected X-rays, visible and ultraviolet light and consistently demonstrated its role as one of the most important astronomical observatories of all time..

Name: XMM-Newton. The name stands for “X-ray Multi-Mirror design” and also honours Sir Isaac Newton, the English physicist and mathematician (1642-1727) who advanced theories of gravitation and optics, built the first working reflecting telescope and discovered how to split light into its components to study its spectrum.

Mission: Solving the mysteries of the violent X-ray Universe, from enigmatic black holes to cosmological structure formation traced through hot gas.

Launch: 10 December 1999, on the first Ariane-5 commercial mission, from ESA’s Kourou Spaceport in French Guiana.

Planned mission lifetime: 10 December 2019 marked XMM-Newton's 20th anniversary in space. The mission is ongoing.

Operational orbit: After launch, XMM-Newton was placed in a 48-hour elliptical orbit around the Earth, inclined at 40 degrees. The orbit takes it from 7 000 to 114 000 km altitude. For 40 hours every orbit, the satellite is therefore outside Earth’s obscuring radiation belts.

Cost: 689 million Euros. This included the spacecraft design and development, the launch and the ground operations during the first two years.

Partnerships: XMM-Newton is an ESA science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member States and NASA.

Mission objectives

XMM-Newton view of hot gas motions in the Perseus galaxy cluster
XMM-Newton view of hot gas motions in the Perseus galaxy cluster

XMM-Newton continues supplying key new data to every aspect of astronomy:

  • Life in the Universe, studying our Solar System and how the activity of more distant stars impacts the habitability of their orbiting planets;
  • Extreme Universe, exploring places beyond our imagination shaped by the extraordinary gravity around black holes and by shocks from the most powerful cosmic explosions;
  • Cosmology, dissecting the cosmic structure formed and evolved after the Big Bang.

XMM-Newton is paving the way for a joint adventure with Athena and LISA, exploring together the hot and energetic Universe and the powerful radiative counterparts of gravitational waves, bringing sound to the cosmic movies.

Scientific highlights

XMM-Newton sees light echo from behind a black hole
XMM-Newton sees light echo from behind a black hole

XMM-Newton is a highly successful observatory with over 6900 refereed publications by the end of 2021. In two decades, the mission has supplied a constant stream of outstanding science.

These examples illustrate the scientific impact of the mission:

Spacecraft

XMM-Newton
XMM-Newton

Design: XMM-Newton is a three-axis stabilised spacecraft with a high pointing accuracy. The satellite consists of a service module bearing the X-ray mirror modules, propulsion, and electrical systems, a long telescope tube, and the focal plane assembly carrying the science instruments.

Mirror: Because of their high energy and their interaction with matter, X-rays are difficult to focus. When using mirrors, like XMM-Newton, the mirror surface has to be made of a material that does not readily absorb the X-rays, and the design has to ensure that the incoming rays hit the mirror surface at a shallow angle (grazing). Only in this way can the X-rays be efficiently reflected and directed to a focus point.

XMM-Newton uses barrel-shaped mirrors angled along their length to focus the X-rays on the detectors. The three 'mirror modules' each have 58 wafer-thin nickel mirrors, which are gold-plated and nested in each other just a few millimetres apart. The total mirror surface area of the three mirror modules together exceeds 120 m², rivalling the size of a tennis court. Constructing the mirror modules to such a level of perfection is one of the programme's greatest achievements.

Dimensions: XMM-Newton is the biggest science satellite ever built in Europe. Total length is 10 metres and, with its solar arrays, the satellite has a 16-metre span.

Mass: 3.8 tonnes (each X-ray mirror module has a mass of 500 kilograms).

Industrial involvement: The prime contractor was Dornier Satellitensysteme, part of Daimler Chrysler Aerospace (Friedrichshafen, Germany). They led an industrial consortium involving 46 companies from 14 European countries and one in the United States. Media Lario, Como, Italy, developed the X-ray Mirror Modules. About 1000 engineers and 150 scientists were involved in the creation of XMM-Newton.

What’s on board?

The dynamic behaviour of a black hole corona
The dynamic behaviour of a black hole corona

There are three scientific instruments aboard XMM-Newton:

European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC)

At the prime focus of each of the spacecraft's three telescopes, behind a six-position filter wheel, is a European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC). With silicon chips that can register extremely weak X-ray radiation, these advanced Charge-Coupled Device cameras (CCD) are capable of detecting rapid variations in intensity, down to a thousandth of a second and less!

Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS)

For a complementary analysis of the spectrum, two of the three telescopes have a grating structure on their mirror module that reflects about 40 per cent of the incoming rays to a secondary focus, with its own CCD camera. This Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) "fans out" the various wavelengths, thus indicating, in more detail than EPIC, the exact condition of individual elements, such as oxygen and iron.

Optical Monitor (OM)

The third instrument aboard XMM-Newton is a conventional but very sensitive optical/UV telescope, the Optical Monitor (OM). It can observe simultaneously the same regions as the X-ray telescopes, but at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths. This gives astronomers complementary data about the X-ray sources. The 2-metre long telescope is mounted on the mirror support platform of XMM-Newton alongside the X-ray mirror modules. In orbit, this 30 cm diameter telescope is as sensitive as a four-metre diameter instrument on the Earth's surface.

Operations

ESA ground station network
ESA ground station network

Ground control: European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, using ground stations at Perth (Australia), Kourou (French Guiana) and Santiago de Chile (Chile).

Science Operations: The ESA Science Operations Centre at ESAC in Villanueva de la Cañada, near Madrid, Spain, manages observation requests and the receipt, processing and distribution of XMM-Newton data. The XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (SSC), a consortium of institutes in the ESA community, generates catalogues of X-ray sources and correlates all XMM-Newton observations with existing data acquiredelsewhere in the world and in space observatories.

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