Development status of Filter Wheel for WFI instrument of ATHENA

Szymon Polak, Robert Pietrzak, Adam Sikorski, Jacek Musiał, Mateusz Dumin, Adam Dacko, Mirosław Rataj, Tomasz Barciński, Tadeusz Kamisiński, Adam Pilch, Wojciech Binek, Agata Różańska, Grzegorz Woźniak, Monika Zuchniak, Norbert Meidinger, Markus Plattner, Andreas von Kienlin, Marco Barbera, Fabio D'Anca, Giancarlo Parodi

ATHENA is the future X-ray telescope to observe hot and energetic Universe. It has been selected by European Space Agency (ESA) as a second large mission with a launch foreseen in 2031. Polish engineers and researchers were invited to participate in the design and construction of subsystems for both ATHENA instruments. In this paper, we present the procedure and results of acoustic tests of Filter Wheel Assembly (FWA) designed in Poland for Wide Field Imager (WFI). WFI is one of the ATHENA’s detector which requires large area thin optical filters of the size never used before in space. The goal of acoustic tests was to check if such optical filters placed on FWA will survive acoustic loads generated during the mission launch. The test’s results were very successful, proving that 170x170 mm, a few hundred nm thin optical filters will not be destroyed by acoustic waved in normal pressure conditions, therefore closing WFI in vacuum is not required.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 10, 63-68 (2020)

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