The NewAthena mission concept in the context of the next decade of X-ray astronomy

TL;DR

The paper discusses the NewAthena mission concept, a next-generation X-ray observatory designed to address key scientific questions in high-energy astrophysics and enable groundbreaking discoveries in the next decade.

Contribution

It introduces the NewAthena mission concept, a collaborative European, JAXA, and NASA effort, building on the Athena design to significantly enhance X-ray observational capabilities.

Findings

NewAthena aims for an order-of-magnitude improvement in sensitivity and spectroscopy.

The mission will address fundamental questions in black hole growth, galaxy evolution, and cosmic baryon distribution.

It builds on previous Athena studies to enable transformational scientific discoveries.

Abstract

Large X-ray observatories such as Chandra and XMM-Newton have been delivering scientific breakthroughs in research fields as diverse as our Solar System, the astrophysics of stars, stellar explosions and compact objects, accreting super-massive black holes, and large-scale structures traced by the hot plasma permeating and surrounding galaxy groups and clusters. The recently launched observatory XRISM is opening in earnest the new observational window of non-dispersive high-resolution spectroscopy. However, several quests are left open, such as the effect of the stellar radiation field on the habitability of nearby planets, the Equation-of-State regulating matter in neutron stars, the origin and distribution of metals in the Universe, the processes driving the cosmological evolution of the baryons locked in the gravitational potential of Dark Matter and the impact of supermassive black hole growth on galaxy evolution, just to mention a few. Furthermore, X-ray astronomy is a key player in multi-messenger astrophysics. Addressing these quests experimentally requires an order-of-magnitude leap in sensitivity, spectroscopy and survey capabilities with respect to existing X-ray observatories. This paper succinctly summarizes the main areas where high-energy astrophysics is expected to contribute to our understanding of the Universe in the next decade and describes a new mission concept under study by the European Space Agency, the scientific community worldwide and two International Partners (JAXA and NASA), designed to enable transformational discoveries: NewAthena. This concept inherits its basic payload design from a previous study carried out until 2022, Athena.