The German X-ray telescope eROSITA will perform the first imaging all-sky survey in the medium energy range up to 10 keV with unprecedented spectral and angular resolution. The launch of eROSITA onboard of the Russian Spectrum- Röntgen-Gamma satellite into an orbit around the L-2 lagrangian point is foreseen in 2016. Even tough the L-2 space environment can be considered free of orbital debris, the presence of extraterrestrial meteoroids in the interplanetary space implies a certain hazard for the eROSITA pnCCDs, as experienced by both pn and MOS cameras onboard XMM-Newton. In this paper we address this question and investigate the response of the optical blocking filter to hypervelocity impacts.

Date Published: 24 July 2014
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9144, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 91444W (24 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055464

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9144:
Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2014: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray
Tadayuki Takahashi; Jan-Willem A. den Herder; Mark Bautz, Editor(s)