NASA Advances First-Ever Silicon-Based X-ray Optic
Zhang, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has shown in repeated testing that single-crystal silicon - a hard, brittle non-metallic element used in the manufacturing of computer chips - works exceptionally well as an X-ray optic. Read more
Silicon technology offers extended X-ray vision of high-energy cosmos
As elements of the integrated circuits running our computers, phones and electronics, silicon wafers are everywhere. An ESA-led effort is establishing an out-of-this-world use for these commonplace items: when stacked together precisely by the thousand they promise to deliver astronomy's clearest X-ray view yet of the most violent regions of space. Read more
At a bilateral ESA-NASA meeting held on 15-16 July, 2008, David Southwood, the ESA Director for the Science and Robotic Exploration Program, and Ed Weiler, the NASA Associate Administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, endorsed a plan to establish an International X-ray Observatory (IXO) study.