Mission operations are straightforward, as most observations will be long (~100 ksec), uninterrupted, and pre-planned. Arcus will be launched into an ~ 7 day 4:1 lunar resonance orbit, resulting in high observing efficiency, low particle background and a favorable thermal environment. The power and telemetry requirements on the spacecraft are modest. The focused X-rays from these optics are diffracted by high-efficiency Critical-Angle Transmission (CAT) gratings, and the results are imaged with flight-proven CCD detectors and electronics. Arcus relies upon the same 12m focal length grazing-incidence silicon pore X-ray optics (SPO) that ESA has developed for the Athena mission the focal length is achieved on orbit via an extendable optical bench. The Arcus key science goals are (1) to measure the effects of structure formation imprinted upon the hot baryons that are predicted to lie in extended halos around galaxies, groups, and clusters, (2) to trace the propagation of outflowing mass, energy, and momentum from the vicinity of the black hole to extragalactic scales as a measure of their feedback and (3) to explore how stars, circumstellar disks and exoplanet atmospheres form and evolve. The observatory provides high-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy in the 12-50 Å bandpass with unprecedented sensitivity: effective areas of >350 cm^2 and spectral resolution >2500 at the energies of O VII and O VIII for z=0-0.3.
Combined with the high-heritage NGIS LEOStar-2 spacecraft and launched into 4:1 lunar resonant orbit, Arcus provides high sensitivity and high efficiency observing of a wide range of astrophysical sources.Īrcus, a Medium Explorer (MIDEX) mission, was selected by NASA for a Phase A study in August 2017. Arcus uses the same 12 m focal length grazing-incidence Silicon Pore X-ray Optics (SPOs) that ESA has developed for the Athena mission the focal length is achieved on orbit via an extendable optical bench. The three top science goals for Arcus are (1) to measure the effects of structure formation imprinted upon the hot baryons that are predicted to lie in extended halos around galaxies, (2) to trace the propagation of outflowing mass, energy, and momentum from the vicinity of the black hole to extragalactic scales as a measure of their feedback, and (3) to explore how stars form and evolve. Arcus provides high-resolution soft X-ray spectroscopy in the 12-50 Å bandpass with unprecedented sensitivity, including spectral resolution < 2500 and effective area < 250 cm 2.
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