XEUS will be made up of two separate spacecraft - one spacecraft will house the mirrors, which will focus the X-rays onto another detector spacecraft, placed some 50 meters away. The detector spacecraft will hover at the focal point of the mirrors with an accuracy of within a millimeter.

Space telescopes are complex and expensive, often taking 25 years to fund, develop, build and launch from the original idea. Members of the Department of Physics & Astronomy have taken a lead role in developing ideas for the next generation of X-ray space-telecopes. An idea currently under study by the European Space Agency is the XEUS X-ray observatory. It will consist of the largest set of X-ray mirrors ever launched into space, and so requires the development of new techniques in order to construct X-ray mirrors that are light enough to launch. In addition, more sensitive and accurate detectors are being developed in the Department for future such X-ray space-telescopes.

To find out more, please go to http://www.src.le.ac.uk/projects/xeus/