The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
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In this photo, taken in May 2023, a team of engineers at the Institute of High-Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is finalising the construction of the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) for the Einstein Probe mission.
Einstein Probe is a collaboration led by CAS with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Germany. This is a very innovative mission, designed to continuously monitor the X-ray sky and hunt for powerful blasts of X-ray light coming from mysterious celestial objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
For this, Einstein Probe carries two advanced instruments: the Wide-field X-ray Telescope (WXT) to monitor extremely large areas of the X-ray sky in one shot, and the Follow-up X-ray Telescope (FXT) to swiftly observe with more sensitivity the new sources spotted by WXT.
As seen from the image, FXT consists of two X-ray telescopes. The optics of each unit follow a classic Wolter-I design with a mirror assembly based on the technology first developed for ESA’s XMM-Newton.