Summary of Athena session at The X-ray Universe conference 2017

On Wednesday, June 7th there was a session dedicated to Athena in The X-ray Universe 2017 conference in Rome (Italy). In this session the characteristics and capabilities of the two instruments on board Athena (X-IFU - Didier Barret - and WFI - Arne Rau-) were discussed, as well as some examples of the excellent science that they will allow: from surveys of distant and/or obscured AGN (Giorgio Lanzuisi) to detailed modelling of the intracluster medium of clusters of galaxies (Mauro Roncarelli), also including limiting the equation of state of neutron stars (Sebastien Guillot) and getting insights into more exotic physics related to axion-like particles (Nicholas Jennings).

Athena will thus transform all corners of Astronomy, as also addressed in Xavier Barcons' talk in the plenary session on the morning of the next day, while Matteo Guainazzi's talk centred more on the technical and programmatic level, highlighting the good health and good progress of the mission towards adoption in 2020, and assessing the science impact of certain cost-saving options to bring Athena within the cost-at-completion cap established by ESA.

The received presentations of the Athena session will be uploaded to the section Presentations by the Community in the coming days. Stay tuned!