ESA SRON JAXA Astro-H: A New space telescope to explore the violent Universe

European astronomers will be able to explore the universe with a powerful new Japanese space telescope thanks to an agreement recently signed.

Officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will cooperate in building and operating a satellite called Astro-H.

The orbiting observatory will watch the heavens with X-ray eyes, the latest in a number of space telescopes that can view this part of the spectrum beyond that of visible light. X-rays are emitted by extremely hot events at temperatures ranging from several million to several hundred million degrees Celsius.

Watching them will allow space scientists to observe some of the most extreme phenomena in the Universe including supernova explosions, neutron stars, black holes and the centres of active galaxies.

It will also help them to probe the large-scale structure of the Universe, including clusters of galaxies, and discover how it has evolved over billions of years. It will also help show how matter behaves in extreme gravitational fields.

JAXA’s Dr Tadayuki Takahashi, who invented the technology behind the camera, said: "We are aiming to quickly turn this technology to practical use."

The deal to work together on this exciting mission was signed last month by Professor Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration, and Dr Junjiro Onoda, Director General of the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).

ESA will provide JAXA with hardware components and support for operations and users. In return, astronomers at institutions in ESA countries will be granted observing time on the Astro-H mission.

NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center is also contributing instrumentation to Astro-H, formerly known as NeXT, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin.

The telescope is due to be launched in 2014 from the Tanegashima Space Centre in Southern Japan and will be placed in low-Eath orbit, which is high enough to be clear of the atmosphere which absorbs X-rays and makes them unobservable on the ground.

Astro-H will carry an array of spectrometers and imagers. But it also offers a prime example of how space science can have direct benefits to life back on Earth.

The spacecraft is being equipped with a gamma-ray detector that will observe the dying gasps of stars that go supernova.

The precision that this instrument is capable of will also be used on the ground to help Japan clean up contamination left by the Fukushima disaster after the massive earthquake in 2011.