Impressions of Participants in a Chemical Mass Casualty Exercise

A mass casualty exercise was performed to investigate triage and decontamination of patients exposed to an irritant gas. Nursing students participated in two groups: emergency department triage (ED) and decontamination (DECON). While participants felt overall that the experience was valuable, DECON participants had a greater interest in emergency response and were more likely to volunteer again

NewATHENA optics technology

The re-formulation phase of the next generation x-ray observatory ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics) – now NewATHENA - is being utilized for further improvements of the optics technology. The Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) remains the technology of choice, since it uniquely combines a low mass, large effective area, and good angular resolution, addressing the challenge of the NewATHENA X-ray optics. The performance and preparation for the cost-effective implementation of the flight optics is being further evolved in a joint effort by industry, research institutions and ESA. The SPO technology greatly benefits from investments in the semiconductor industry and maximizes technology spin-in. Dedicated facilities have been and are being created to produce the required mirror plates, assemble them into stacks and mirror modules, integrate them into the complete telescope and measure the performance and compatibility with the NewATHENA technical and programmatic requirements. An overview of the activities preparing the implementation of the NewATHENA optics is provided

High-resolution and light-weight silicon pore x-ray optics

Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) have been invented and developed to enable x-ray optics for space applications that require a combination of high angular resolution while being light-weight to allow achieving a large mirror surface area. In 2005, the SPO technology development was initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) for a flagship x-ray telescope mission and is currently being planned as a baseline for the NewATHENA mission scheduled for launch in the 2030s. Its more than 2m diameter mirror will be segmented and comprises of 492 individual Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) grazing-angle imagers, called mirror modules. Arranged in concentric annuli and following a Wolter-Schwartzschild design, the mirror modules are made of several tens of primary-secondary mirror pairs, each mirror made of silicon, coated to increase the collective area of the system, and shaped to bring the incoming photons to a common focus in 12 m distance. The mission aims to deliver an angular resolution of better than nine arc-seconds (Half-energy width) and effective area of about 1.1 m2 at an energy of 1 keV. We present in this paper the status of the optics production and illustrate not only recent x-ray results but also the progress made on the environmental testing, manufacturing and assembly aspects of SPO based optics