Alignment performance of scientific instruments mounted on ASTRO-H (Hitomi).

Abstract

ASTRO-H (hitomi) was an X-ray astronomy satellite in Japan which was launched on 17 Feb. 2016. To meet its science goals, four kinds of instruments and six detectors were equipped on the satellite. The focal length of two soft X-ray telescopes was 5.6 m, and that of two hard X-ray telescopes is 12m. One of the most difficult challenges for the satellite structure was to meet the alignment requirements for instruments and detectors. Through the ground tests and observation results on orbit, it was confirmed that the performance of alignment meet the requirements. In this paper, the results of on-orbit alignment performance of the instruments and obtained techniques to control the alignment are reported.