Suchergebnisse

We describe the recent status of the Czech contribution to the ESA Athena space mission, with emphasis on the development of new technologies and test samples of X-ray mirrors with precise surfaces, based on new materials, and their applications in space. In addition, alternative X-ray optical arrangements are investigated, such as Kirkpatrick-Baez systems.

The ESA INTEGRAL satellite, launched in October 2002, is the first astrophysical satellite of the European Space Agency ESA with Czech participation. The results of the first 7 years of investigations of various scientific targets e.g. cataclysmic variables, blazars, X-ray sources, and GRBs with the ESA INTEGRAL satellite with Czech participation are briefly presented and discussed.

Thermal forming is a technique for forming glass foils precisely into a desired shape. It is widely used in the automotive industry. It can also be used for shaping X-ray mirror substrates for space missions, as in our case. This paper presents the initial results of methods used for automatic data processing of in-situ measurements of the thermal shaping process and a comparison of measured and simulatated values. It also briefly describes improvements of the overall experimental setup currently being made in order to obtain better and more precise results.