The ASTRO-H mission

ASTRO-H, the new Japanese X-ray Astronomy Satellite following Suzaku, is an international X-ray mission which is currently planed for launch in 2013. ASTRO-H is a combination of wide band X-ray spectroscopy (3 - 80 keV) provided by multi-layer coating, focusing hard X-ray mirrors and hard X-ray imaging detectors, and high energy-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy (0.3 - 10 keV) provided by thin-foil X-ray optics and a micro-calorimeter array. The mission will also carry an X-ray CCD camera as a focal plane detector for a soft X-ray telescope and a non-focusing soft gamma-ray detector. With these instruments, ASTRO-H covers very wide energy range from 0.3 keV to 600 keV. The micro-calorimeter system will be developed by international collaboration lead by lSAS/JAXA and NASA. The simultaneous broad bandpass, coupled with high spectral resolution of delta.E ca. 7 eV by the micro-calorimeter will enable a wide variety of important science themes to be pursued.
Meeting Information: Astrophysics with All-Sky X-Ray observations: 3rd International MAXI Workshop (RIKEN, 10-12 June 2008)