{"id":358,"date":"2020-10-28T15:54:19","date_gmt":"2020-10-28T15:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/?p=358"},"modified":"2025-02-26T13:37:30","modified_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:37:30","slug":"successful-verification-of-the-first-lobster-x-ray-mirror-assembly-for-svom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/2020\/10\/28\/successful-verification-of-the-first-lobster-x-ray-mirror-assembly-for-svom\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful Verification of the First Lobster X-ray Mirror Assembly for SVOM"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Julian Osborne highlights the recent success of the team in the Space Research Centre that is making the flight X-ray optic for the Chinese-French satellite SVOM. <\/em><\/strong><br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SVOM satellite will extend the work done by the Swift mission in characterising the enormous energies of the gamma-ray bursts, crucially extending measurements down to lower energies where new populations of GRBs may be discovered. GRB science has been a major activity of the Astrophysics group since before the launch of Swift in 2004. Leicester provided the X-ray camera for that mission and has made major contributions post-launch, including the new era-defining discoveries of the first gravitational wave &#8211; electromagnetic source and the first high energy neutrino &#8211; electromagnetic source.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This work is funded by a contract from the French Space Agency CNES. Work to get this involvement and subsequent contract took many years; the contract started in 2015.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-8.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-359\" width=\"352\" height=\"299\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-8.png 774w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-8-300x255.png 300w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-8-768x654.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 352px) 100vw, 352px\" \/><figcaption>The front surface of the SVOM lobster X-ray optic, the glass micro-pore optic plates are covered with a thin aluminium film and are mounted on a gold-plated aluminium frame. The optic has a focal length of just over 1 metre.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><br>The success is the X-ray verification of the world-first ever lobster X-ray mirror assembly destined for launch into orbit. This first X-ray image from the assembled optic was obtained from the test beam facility in the Physics basement at Leicester. It verifies the excellent X-ray focussing of the mirror assembly destined for launch in mid-2022.<br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Lobsters focus images in their eyes using curved plates of square pores with internally reflective sides. We have reproduced this optical arrangement to make a super-light-weight optic to provide X-ray focussing using thin glass plates with square pores just 40 microns across. While we have provided X-ray optics using such plates for the MIXS instrument now en route to Mercury, this SVOM optic is the first to use the lobster geometry. <br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is very important to us, as in addition to the low mass it demonstrates the second great advantage of lobster optics &#8211; their extraordinarily wide field of view. A typical X-ray mirror can focus a small fraction of a square degree, but a lobster mirror can focus an arbitrarily large region; for example two 0.25 steradian FOV lobster modules are the baseline for the ESA mission candidate Theseus, due to be selected next year and to be launched in the 2030s.<br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-9.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-360\" width=\"374\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-9.png 724w, https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/files\/2020\/10\/image-9-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 374px) 100vw, 374px\" \/><figcaption>The X-ray verification image, demonstrating excellent focussing, and also the cross-arm nature of the response of lobster optics. (The image is saturated to show the cross-arms.)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p> <br>Final delivery of the SVOM optic to CNES will occur in February next year after an extensive test campaign. <br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The work of making this lobster X-ray optic has been undertaken by a highly expert team under the engineering leadership of Jim Pearson and the project management of Paul Drum. They have received congratulations from CNES (and from me) on this great result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Leicester team includes: Tony Crawford, Paul Houghton, Charly Feldman, Chris Bicknell, Gillian Butcher, Duncan Ross, Roisin Speight, Phil Peterson, Dick Willingale, Alex Lodge, Harrison Grossman; with past input from: Jon Sykes, Val Aslanyan, Karoly Keresztes, Jim Campbell. The project is led by Julian Osborne, the other SVOM Co-Is are Paul O\u2019Brien and Dick Willingale. None of this would have been possible without the pioneering leadership of the late SRC director, George Fraser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julian Osborne highlights the recent success of the team in the Space Research Centre that is making the flight X-ray optic for the Chinese-French satellite SVOM. The SVOM satellite will extend the work done by the Swift mission in characterising the enormous energies of the gamma-ray bursts, crucially extending measurements down to lower energies where [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":256,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astro","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":385,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffblogs.le.ac.uk\/physicsastronomy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}