Abstract
The Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF) will be the third satellite in the series of great observatories in the NASA programme, after the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gamma Ray Observatory. The anticipated launch date of AXAF is 1998. The facility is designed to perform imaging and spectroscopy with very high spatial and spectral resolution in the energy range 0.1–10 keV. The spacecraft carries a large, high-precision X-ray telescope (HRMA) with a spatial resolution of better than 0.5 arcseconds. The telescope consists of a nest of paraboloid-hyperboloid mirror combinations, with an outer diameter of 1.2 meter and a focal length of 10 meter. Four different focal plane instruments and two different types of transmission gratings are being developed; a CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS), a High Resolution Camera (HRC), a High Resolution X-ray Calorimeter (XRS) and a Bragg Crystal Spectrometer (BCS). The two different transmission gratings HETG and LETG, located behind the HRMA, are optimized for high- and low-energy response, respectively. The focus of the movable HRMA can be positioned at any aperture position of the focal plane instruments.
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