The International X-ray Observatory (IXO) – a joint effort of NASA, ESA, and JAXA– combines a large X-ray mirror with powerful new instrumentation that will explore the high energy Universe. Launch is planned for 2021.

Peering through dust and obscuring clouds of gas, IXO will discover and map supermassive black holes at very early times when the Universe was still assembling galaxies. These images and spectra will uncover the history and evolution of matter and energy, visible and dark, as well as their interplay during the formation of the largest structures. IXO observations of neutron stars will show how matter reforms under crushing pressures well beyond any laboratory, while studies of spinning black holes will reveal how these objects form and grow. IXO will explore both when and how elements were created, how they dispersed into the intergalactic medium, and much more.

Read more about IXO science

To achieve these science goals, IXO will feature a single large X-ray mirror with a 3 square meter collecting area and 5 arcsec angular resolution, and a suite of instrumentation, including a wide field imaging detector, a hard X-ray imaging detector, a high-spectral-resolution imaging spectrometer (calorimeter), a grating spectrometer, a high timing resolution spectrometer, and a polarimeter.

Read more about IXO technology drivers

This will provide up to 100-fold increase in effective area for high resolution spectroscopy from 0.3–10 keV, deep spectral imaging from 0.3–40 keV over a wide field of view, and microsecond spectroscopic timing with high count rate capability.

Read more about IXO Science performance requirements

IXO is the result of the merging of NASA´s Constellation-X and ESA/JAXA´s XEUS mission concepts.

Before IXO: Con-X and XEUS

IXO is designed to operate for a minimum of five years, with a goal of 10 years, so IXO science operations are anticipated to last from 2021 to 2030.