The ASTRO-H Mission

Abstract

The joint JAXA/NASA ASTRO-H mission is the sixth in a series of highly\nsuccessful X-ray missions initiated by the Institute of Space and Astronautical\nScience (ISAS). ASTRO-H will investigate the physics of the high-energy\nuniverse by performing high-resolution, high-throughput spectroscopy with\nmoderate angular resolution. ASTRO-H covers very wide energy range from 0.3 keV\nto 600 keV. ASTRO-H allows a combination of wide band X-ray spectroscopy (5-80\nkeV) provided by multilayer coating, focusing hard X-ray mirrors and hard X-ray\nimaging detectors, and high energy-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy (0.3-12\nkeV) provided by thin-foil X-ray optics and a micro-calorimeter array. The\nmission will also carry an X-ray CCD camera as a focal plane detector for a\nsoft X-ray telescope (0.4-12 keV) and a non-focusing soft gamma-ray detector\n(40-600 keV) . The micro-calorimeter system is developed by an international\ncollaboration led by ISAS/JAXA and NASA. The simultaneous broad bandpass,\ncoupled with high spectral resolution of Delta E ~7 eV provided by the\nmicro-calorimeter will enable a wide variety of important science themes to be\npursued.\n