Happy holidays and a happy New Year!

2021 is coming to an end and it is time for us to reflect on this busy year.

Technical and scientific activities were numerous, with a strong involvement of all teams across the world. We were happy to witness the growth of our Consortium with almost 300 members working collectively to reach our ambitious objectives.

An important step this year was the intermediate review of the Science Instrument Module (where the X-IFU will be located) by ESA. It ended positively with some new optimisation decided for the instrument. From the US, the Decadal survey showed that Athena’s science themes are well represented within the priority science questions identified by Astro2020.

This is also the year where we moved one step further on our path to reduce the environmental impact of the X-IFU’s development. We kick-off a full Life Cycle Analysis of the instrument which will pinpoint the hotspots of its environmental impacts and give us recommendations to reduce them.

Lastly, we published a new website for the X-IFU with a new design and updated content.

Many activities are already planned for next year as 2022 will be a very important year for X-IFU and Athena. The mission profile will be defined for the adoption of Athena early 2023.

On behalf of the X-IFU Consortium, we wish you happy holidays and a happy New Year!