The Microchannel X-ray Telescope on board the SVOM mission: in-flight scientific performance

TL;DR

The MXT on the SVOM mission is a compact X-ray telescope using innovative Lobster-Eye optics and a pnCCD, with demonstrated in-flight performance in localization and spectral analysis during early operations.

Contribution

This paper presents the design and in-flight performance of the MXT, highlighting its innovative optics and real-time data analysis capabilities.

Findings

Effective in-flight localization of X-ray sources.

Optical and spectral performances match pre-flight ground measurements.

Successful early science operations during SVOM commissioning.

Abstract

The Microchannel X-ray Telescope (MXT) is a compact and lightweight focusing X-ray telescope, which is part of the space payload of the SVOM mission. The main goal of the MXT instrument is to precisely localize and physically characterize the early phases of the X-ray afterglows detected by the SVOM ECLAIRs coded mask telescope after a satellite slew. The MXT is composed by a "Lobster-Eye" type optics, with a 58$\times$58 arcmin$^{2}$ field of view, based on micro-pores of 40 $\mu$m side. This innovative type of optics is coupled to an X-ray camera, which implements at its focal plane a low-noise pnCCD. The MXT system is completed by an onboard calculator, able to command the whole telescope and to analyze in real time the MXT data stream and hence to localize the sources within the MXT field of view. In this paper, we present the MXT design and in-flight performance, as measured during the SVOM Commissioning and early science operation phase. In particular, we will focus on the optical and spectral performances, the in flight localization capabilities, and how these compare with the pre-flight ground measurements.