Athena is part of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 scientific programme which is being implemented in terms of a number of missions of different sizes, with L-class missions being the flagships of the programme.
The Athena mission was selected in June 2014 as the ESA L2 mission to fulfil the Hot and Energetic Universe theme, making it Europe’s next generation space observatory for high energy astrophysics. As with most ESA missions, Athena is a collaboration between a large number of European nations and also includes contributions from the US (NASA) and Japan (JAXA). The two Athena focal plane instrument consortia are led by France (IRAP) and Germany (MPE).
This website is the portal for all Athena-related information for the UK Athena community.