Lynx is a concept under study for prioritization in the 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey. Providing orders of magnitude increase in sensitivity over Chandra, Lynx will examine the first black holes and their galaxies, map the large-scale structure and galactic halos, and shed new light on the environments of young stars and their planetary systems. In order to meet the Lynx science goals, the telescope consists of a high-angular resolution optical assembly complemented by an instrument suite that may include a High Definition X-ray Imager, X-ray Microcalorimeter and an X-ray Grating Spectrometer. The telescope is integrated onto the spacecraft to form a comprehensive observatory concept. Progress on the formulation of the Lynx telescope and observatory configuration is reported in this paper.

We describe an approach to build an x-ray mirror assembly that can meet Lynx's requirements of high-angular resolution, large effective area, light weight, short production schedule, and low-production cost. Adopting a modular hierarchy, the assembly is composed of 37,492 mirror segments, each of which measures ∼100 mm × 100 mm × 0.5 mm. These segments are integrated into 611 modules, which are individually tested and qualified to meet both science performance and spaceflight environment requirements before they in turn are integrated into 12 metashells. The 12 metashells are then integrated to form the mirror assembly. This approach combines the latest precision polishing technology and the monocrystalline silicon material to fabricate the thin and lightweight mirror segments. Because of the use of commercially available equipment and material and because of its highly modular and hierarchical building-up process, this approach is highly amenable to automation and mass production to maximize production throughput and to minimize production schedule and cost. As of fall 2018, the basic elements of this approach, including substrate fabrication, coating, alignment, and bonding, have been validated by the successful building and testing of single-pair mirror modules. In the next few years, the many steps of the approach will be refined and perfected by repeatedly building and testing mirror modules containing progressively more mirror segments to fully meet science performance, spaceflight environments, as well as programmatic requirements of the Lynx mission and other proposed missions, such as AXIS. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

The capability of an X-ray telescope depends on the quality of its mirror, which can be characterized by four quantities: point-spread-function, photon-collecting area, field of view, and energy bandwidth. In this paper, we report on our effort of developing an X-ray mirror technology that advances all of those four quantities for future X-ray astronomical missions. In addition, we have adopted a modular approach, capable of making mirror assemblies for missions of all sizes, from large missions like Lynx, to medium-sized Probes like AXIS, TAP, and HEX-P, to Explorers like STAR-X and FORCE, and to small sub-orbital missions like OGRE. This approach takes into account that all X-ray telescopes must be spaceborne and therefore require their mirror assemblies be lightweight. It is designed to make use of modern mass production techniques and commercial off-the-shelf equipment and materials to maximize production throughput and thereby to minimize implementation schedule and costs.

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X-ray astronomy critically depends on X-ray optics. The capability of an X-ray telescope is largely determined by the point-spread function (PSF) and the photon-collection area of its mirrors, the same as telescopes in other wavelength bands. Since an X-ray telescope must be operated above the atmosphere in space and that X-rays reflect only at grazing incidence, X-ray mirrors must be both lightweight and thin, both of which add significant technical and engineering challenge to making an X-ray telescope. In this paper we report our effort at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) of developing an approach to making an Xray mirror assembly that can be significantly better than the mirror assembly currently flying on the Chandra X-ray Observatory in each of the three aspects: PSF, effective area per unit mass, and production cost per unit effective area. Our approach is based on the precision polishing of mono-crystalline silicon to fabricate thin and lightweight X-ray mirrors of the highest figure quality and micro-roughness, therefore, having the potential of achieving diffraction-limited X-ray optics. When successfully developed, this approach will make implementable in the 2020s and 2030s many X-ray astronomical missions that are currently on the drawing board, including sounding rocket flights such as OGRE, Explorer class missions such as STAR-X and FORCE, Probe class missions such as AXIS, TAP, and HEX-P, as well as large missions such as Lynx.