[Everyone] Please sign up in support of the Athena X-ray Observatory by Tuesday June 7th (tomorrow!)

[Nanda Rea]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Athena Community Office <aco at ifca.unican.es>
Date: Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 11:59 AM
Subject: [Athena-wg-members 75] Show your support to the Athena mission,
now!
To: athena-wg-members <athena-wg-members at lists.mpe.mpg.de>


Dear *Athena* community colleagues,



We wanted to send a brief update on the actions being taken in response to
the risk of a potential descope and delay of *Athena* as a consequence of
the proposals for the future of the ESA science Programme to be discussed
at a Science Programme Committee (SPC) workshop on 9th June. The
participants in this workshop are the delegates from national funding
agencies and their advisors, as listed here:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/spc/members.



The ASST has sent a formal response to the national agencies, ESA and its
advisory bodies to convey our reading of the ESA Executives’ proposal,
emphasizing the irreparable harm to European X-ray astronomy that would be
caused by major cuts and/or delay to *Athena*. In our document, the ASST
made a strong case for ESA to preserve the flagship X-ray science of
*Athena* and European leadership in X-ray astronomy, and stressed the size,
strength and breadth of interests of the community that will benefit from
*Athena*. We call on the delegates to take a fair and balanced approach to
any unavoidable cost-cutting measures in the science programme, in full
consultation with the *Athena* Science Study Team, the Instrument
Consortia, and the community working groups.

The ASST believes that a statement showing the support of the large and
diverse *Athena* community to the mission may have a positive influence on
the forthcoming discussion at the SPC. We warmly encourage you to sign the
statement available at this link by Tuesday, June 7:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMAQsg8R_wyWG55hyM53ZBoUdUywMeu3ei_Q_7q9c8d2xFQw/viewform?usp=pp_url



As our previous message emphasized, no decision on the future of *Athena*
has been taken yet. We hope our actions, representing the interests of the
large *Athena* community, will contribute to *Athena* continuing the
process to Adoption that ESA already started with the kick-off of the
Mission Adoption Review on May 10, and that is scheduled to be finalized at
the SPC meeting of June 2023.



We again encourage you to contact an ASST member with any questions or
additional concerns you may have.

The ASST: D. Barret, M. Cappi, E. Costantini, J. Croston, A. Decourchelle,
J.W. den Herder, M. Guainazzi, H. Matsumoto, K. Nandra, L. Piro, N. Rea, T.
Reiprich, R. Smith, N. Werner.

--
*Athena* Community Office
Instituto de Física de Cantabria
Avenida de los Castros s/n (Edif. Juan Jordá)
39005 Santander
aco at ifca.unican.es
http://www.the-athena-x-ray-observatory.eu/
Twitter: @AthenaXobs <https://twitter.com/AthenaXobs>
Facebook: athena.xray.observatory
<https://www.facebook.com/athena.xray.observatory/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pulsarastronomy.net/pipermail/everyone_lists.pulsarastronomy.net/attachments/20220606/fa7d08a9/attachment.html>