Telescope style X-ray telescope, proposed building or structure Website www.hxmt.cn/english/index.php | ||
Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) is a planned Chinese X-ray space observatory, scheduled for launch in 2017 to observe black holes, neutron stars and other phenomena based on their X-ray and gamma ray emissions. It will be China's first astronomy satellite. It is based on the JianBing 3 imagery reconnaissance satellite series platform.
The main scientific instrument is an array of 18 NaI(Tl)/CsI(na) slat-collimated "phoswich" scintillation detectors, collimated to 5.7°×1° overlapping fields of view. The main NaI detectors have an area of 286 cm2 each, and cover the 20—200 keV energy range. Data analysis is planned to be by a direct algebraic method, "direct demodulation", which has shown promise in de-convolving the raw data into images while preserving excellent angular and energy resolution.
The project, a joint collaboration of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tsinghua University, has been under development since 2000.