Silicon pore X-ray optics for the NewAthena telescope

The European Space Agency (ESA), cosine and its partners have been developing for more than 15 years the Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) technology. SPO enables the next generation of space x-ray telescopes, with increased sensitivity and resolution. NewAthena, the New Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics, has just been endorsed by ESA as one of its L-class mission, to launch in 2037. NewAthena’s optic is modular and consists of up to 600 mirror modules that form together a ~2.5 m diameter x-ray mirror with a focal length of 12 m and an angular resolution of 9 arc-seconds half-energy width. The total geometric polished mirror surface is ~300 m2, which will focus x-rays with an energy of about 0.3 – 10 keV onto two detectors, a wild-field imager (WFI) and an imaging spectrometer (XIFU). Building hundreds of such SPO mirror modules in a cost-efficient and timely manner is a formidable task and subject of a dedicated ESA technology development program. We present in this paper the status of the optics production, and illustrate not only recent X-ray results but also the progress made on the environmental testing, manufacturing and assembly aspects of SPO based optics.