The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to build a new X-ray observatory that uses super-polished silicon wafers in a telescope to find hot matter in the Universe.
The new observatory would replace the space agency's XMM-Newton, along with NASA's Chandra, which have been used since the last century to find information on black holes, supernovas and gas clouds, according to Phys.org reported.
The telescope would travel 10 to 100 times deeper into the Universe than today's X-ray telescopes.
"This demands a whole new type of X-ray mirror," said Marcos Bavdaz, who has been leading the push for new technology for the agency's future missions. "To reach the kind of size needed, this new mission's mirrors will have to be 10 times lighter than XMM's while delivering even sharper images."
X-rays are reflected at shallow angles, which means that tens of thousands of mirrors need to be stacked together to make a telescope big enough for X-ray missions. To accomplish this, ESA has developed a technique called "silicon pore optics," Daily News reported.
"We make use of industrial silicon wafers, usually utilized to manufacture microprocessors," said Eric Wille, optical program engineer for the X-ray optics development. "We take advantage of their stiffness and super-polished surface, stacking a handful of dozen at a time collectively to type a single 'mirror module.'"
Techniques in semiconductor manufacturing will be used to stack the mirrors with maximum accuracy, Phys.org reported.
"Stacking is done by a specifically designed robot aiming for micron-scale precision," Wille said. "We've seen big jumps in quality as the robotics improve."
"All the stacking takes place in a cleanroom, since tiny dust particles risk large deformations in the mirror stack," he continued. "The semiconductor industry is improving the quality of silicon wafers, which will further improve the mirror quality in future."
ESA is looking to launch the observatory in 2028, Daily News reported.
The X-ray mission will focus on two issues: how and why ordinary matter assembles into the galaxies and galactic clusters we see today, and how black holes develop and influence their surroundings.
