A Methodology for Ensuring Strategic Alignment of Railway Infrastructure Asset Management Processes

or railway infrastructure management companies, the effective management of the assets is essential for the achievement of business goals. Asset management (AM) translates the organizational objectives into technical and financial decisions, plans and activities, with the aim of realizing value from assets. Securing that AM plans and activities are carried out in accordance with the company business strategy is fundamental. To do so, in this paper, a methodology is developed together with the RFI (Rete Ferroviaria Italiana), the Italian railways infrastructure manager company, relying on the process maturity assessment model already built by the company. The methodology allows identifying the AM improvement actions with highest priority ensuring strategic alignment with company long-term vision. The methodology is already demonstrated through a PoC (Proof of Concept) and its implementation is underwa

The VERT-X calibration facility:development of the most critical parts

The mirror assembly of the ESA New - Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics (New-ATHENA) will be the largest X-ray optics ever built. Indeed, its unprecedented size, mass and focal length create great difficulties for the ground calibration. The VERT-X project aims at developing an innovative calibration facility which will be able to accomplish to this extremely challenging task. The design is based on a 2.5 cm2 parallel beam produced by an X-ray source positioned in the focus of a highly performing collimator. In order to cover the whole mirror, the beam will be accurately moved by a raster-scan with the capability to tilt up to 3 degrees in order to test the off-axis performance and the out of field stray-light. The whole system is enclosed in a cylindrical vacuum chamber about 20m high and with a diameter ranging from 7 to 4m. By design, VERT-X will be able to measure the New-ATHENA mirror half energy width (HEW) with a precision of 0.1”, all over the field of view, with the source size, the collimator error and the raster scan tracking accuracy being the most important terms of the error budget. The VERT-X project, started in 2018, is financed by ESA and conducted by a consortium that includes INAF together with EIE, Media Lario, BCV Progetti and Apogeo Space. This paper presents the current state of the development and manufacturing of the most critical systems of the facility, namely the raster-scan mechanism and the source-collimator vertical assembly.</p

ATHENA X ray Optics Development and Accommodation

The Athena mission, under study and preparation by ESA as its second Large-class science mission, requires the largest X-ray optics ever flown, building on a novel optics technology based on mono crystalline silicon. Referred to as Silicon Pore Optics technology (SPO), the optics is highly modular and benefits from technology spin-in from the semiconductor industry. The telescope aperture of about 2.5 meters is populated by around 700 mirror modules, accurately co-aligned to produce a common focus. The development of the SPO technology is a joint effort by European industrial and research entities, working together to address the challenges to demonstrate the imaging performance, robustness and efficient series production of the Athena optics. A technology development plan was established and is being regularly updated to reflect the latest developments, and is fully funded by the ESA technology development programmes. An industrial consortium was formed to ensure coherence of the individual technology development activities. The SPO technology uses precision machined mirror plates produced using the latest generation top quality 12 inch silicon wafers, which are assembled into rugged stacks. The surfaces of the mirror plates and the integral support structure is such, that no glue is required to join the individual mirror plates. Once accurately aligned with respect to each other, the surfaces of the mirror plates merge in a physical bonding process. The resultant SPO mirror modules are therefore very accurate and stable and can sustain the harsh conditions encountered during launch and are able to tolerate the space environment expected during operations. The accommodation of the Athena telescope is also innovative, relying on a hexapod mechanism to align the optics to the selected detector instruments located in the focal plane. System studies are complemented by dedicated technology development activities to demonstrate the capabilities before the adoption of the Athena mission