Absolutely right - ASTRO-H brings new capabilities - high spectral resolution in X-rays which we don't have now. It's pretty exciting.
Beyond that, here in Europe, the European Space Agency has now approved our proposal for Athena (http://www.mpe.mpg.de/Athena), which should provide a large collecting area, high spectral resolution and pretty good spatial resolution. It's going to be a large technical challenge, which unfortunately means we'll have to wait until 2028 for launch. It requires development of a new mirror technology (based on stacks of silicon chip wafers!), development of a cryogenic X-IFU (X-ray integral field unit), which is going to provide spatially-resolve high spectral resolution X-ray spectroscopy. There's also a wide field imager, capable of mapping large areas of the sky quickly.
Absolutely right - ASTRO-H brings new capabilities - high spectral resolution in X-rays which we don't have now. It's pretty exciting.
Beyond that, here in Europe, the European Space Agency has now approved our proposal for Athena (http://www.mpe.mpg.de/Athena), which should provide a large collecting area, high spectral resolution and pretty good spatial resolution. It's going to be a large technical challenge, which unfortunately means we'll have to wait until 2028 for launch. It requires development of a new mirror technology (based on stacks of silicon chip wafers!), development of a cryogenic X-IFU (X-ray integral field unit), which is going to provide spatially-resolve high spectral resolution X-ray spectroscopy. There's also a wide field imager, capable of mapping large areas of the sky quickly.