[XMM-Newton] (Music throughout)
[Launched on December 10, 1999]
[XMM is a joint ESA and NASA X-ray telescope]
[It has revolutionized the study of high-energy phenomena in the universe]
Norbert Schartel: When XMM-Newton
was launched, we never were expecting it would last 20 years or more.
Dheeraj Pasham: XMM is an awesome mission. It's one of my
top favorite missions of all time. Lisa Winter: XMM has been a
part of my career from the earliest stages even until now.
Laura Brenneman: My work simply wouldn't have been possible without XMM.
Ed Cackett: XMM is an X-ray astronomy satellite. It allows us to look at X-ray
light coming from some of the most extreme objects in the universe; all the way
from stars to black holes and distant galaxies.
Stephanie LaMassa, Space Telescope Science Institute: XMM has influenced modern astrophysics by having
great sensitivity and large collecting area in X-rays,
which has addressed science questions which we wouldn't have been able to address otherwise.
Dheeraj Pasham, MIT: If you want to study extragalactic point sources,
then XMM-Newton is essentially the only
instrument out there if you want really good signal-to-noise in the data.
Ed Cackett, Wayne State University: Most recently I've been using XMM data to look at the variability of X-ray light
from material that falls into supermassive black holes.
We've developed a technique called reverberation mapping that looks at echoes
of light to figure out the size scale of material as it falls into a black hole.
Stephanie: In 2006 I started working with XMM data
and a couple years later I started my Ph.D. work on
active galactic nuclei, where XMM-Newton data formed the basis
of a lot of that work, especially for my first paper on that.
Maurice Leutenegger, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: I started working with XMM data in the summer of 2000.
That was when I started doing my Ph.D. research.
Lisa Winter, NSF: I thought it was very cool to have been reading in high school
about it being launched and then be able to
really use the data from that same telescope in my
graduate career to get my Ph.D. from. Daniel Wik, University of Utah: My Ph.D.,
the majority of it was around searching for a certain type of
radiation from galaxy clusters, and so we needed to characterize that really well,
and the only telescope that could do it efficiently
was the XMM-Newton Observatory. Laura Brenneman, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory: Actually all
of my thesis, except for the theoretical work, required XMM data. All of the
active galaxies that I studied were data taken from the XMM
archive. Daniel: XMM has been around for 20 years,
and has this just phenomenal archive of data,
and so a lot of this archival data can be searched
and and new science results can come out. Stephanie: Without XMM,
strophysics would not be as far as it is today.
There is certain science that XMM can do that other
X-ray observatories can't. Dheeraj: Time domain astronomy is going through
a revolution. There's gravitational waves detected, there's several kinds
of weird supernovae detected and having an X-ray instrument
to simultaneously operate while these optical instruments are operating
will be extremely beneficial. Lisa: Many objects change,
they have flares and outbursts, so it's really
a key observation to have everything from the X-ray, the
optical, and the UV, all precisely at the same time.
Stephanie: XMM can contribute to the future by serving
as a pathfinder to find really interesting sources
that can then be followed up with the next generation of telescopes.
Maurice: the continued opportunities for
time domain studies, which are both
photon hungry and just overall time hungry, is
an argument for keeping XMM going for as long as it's technically feasible.
Daniel: We really need to support the observatories that we have and
keeping those aloft, because those are the things that excite everyone about science,
and especially that excite students to go into it.
Lisa: I would say that my career has really been inspired
by XMM-Newton and has followed along it in a lot of different ways
that I didn't expect. Laura: It's remarkable to me that XMM is still performing at the level
it is 20 years after the mission originated. And really, that's the best possible
PR for the mission. (Music)
[XMM-Newton]
[20 Years, and looking forward]
[Additional interviews and footage courtesy of: ESA/Norbert Schartel, Wayne State University, University of Utah, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory]
[Explore, Solar System & Beyond. NASA]