Scientific Seminars

Athena in the ESA's Cosmic Visions

Massimo Cappi
INAF/IASF-Bologna

2011-11-29    15:30    Brera - Cupola Fiore

ESA announced in March this year its decision to delay the downselection of L-class missions (planned for June 2011) until February 2012, to allow the proposing teams to study whether the three L-class candidates (EJSM-Laplace, IXO and LISA) could be rescoped so that they could be largely affordable by Europe only. I will present here the successor of IXO, named Athena (after the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, also daughter of ZEUS). I will summarize its scientific goals, its observational requirements, and the status of the current and planned activities.