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[XMM-Newton] (Music throughout)

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 [Launched on December 10, 1999]

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 [XMM is a joint ESA and NASA X-ray telescope] 

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[It has revolutionized the study of high-energy phenomena in the universe]

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Norbert Schartel: When XMM-Newton 

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was launched, we never were expecting it would last 20 years or more.

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Dheeraj Pasham: XMM is an awesome mission. It’s one of my

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top favorite missions of all time. Lisa Winter: XMM has been a 

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part of my career from the earliest stages even until now.

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Laura Brenneman: My work simply wouldn’t have been possible without XMM. 

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Ed Cackett: XMM is an X-ray astronomy satellite. It allows us to look at X-ray

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light coming from some of the most extreme objects in the universe; all the way

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from stars to black holes and distant galaxies.

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Stephanie LaMassa, Space Telescope Science Institute: XMM has influenced modern astrophysics by having

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great sensitivity and large collecting area in X-rays,

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which has addressed science questions which we wouldn’t have been able to address otherwise.

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Dheeraj Pasham, MIT: If you want to study extragalactic point sources,

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then XMM-Newton is essentially the only

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instrument out there if you want really good signal-to-noise in the data.

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Ed Cackett, Wayne State University: Most recently I’ve been using XMM data to look at the variability of X-ray light 

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from material that falls into supermassive black holes.

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We’ve developed a technique called reverberation mapping that looks at echoes 

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of light to figure out the size scale of material as it falls into a black hole. 

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Stephanie: In 2006 I started working with XMM data

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and a couple years later I started my Ph.D. work on

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active galactic nuclei, where XMM-Newton data formed the basis

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of a lot of that work, especially for my first paper on that. 

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Maurice Leutenegger, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center: I started working with XMM data in the summer of 2000. 

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That was when I started doing my Ph.D. research.

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Lisa Winter, NSF: I thought it was very cool to have been reading in high school

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about it being launched and then be able to

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really use the data from that same telescope in my

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graduate career to get my Ph.D. from. Daniel Wik, University of Utah: My Ph.D.,

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 the majority of it was around searching for a certain type of

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radiation from galaxy clusters, and so we needed to characterize that really well,

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and the only telescope that could do it efficiently

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was the XMM-Newton Observatory. Laura Brenneman, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory: Actually all

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of my thesis, except for the theoretical work, required XMM data. All of the

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active galaxies that I studied were data taken from the XMM

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archive. Daniel: XMM has been around for 20 years,

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and has this just phenomenal archive of data, 

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and so a lot of this archival data can be searched

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and and new science results can come out. Stephanie: Without XMM,

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strophysics would not be as far as it is today.

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There is certain science that XMM can do that other

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X-ray observatories can’t. Dheeraj: Time domain astronomy is going through

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a revolution. There’s gravitational waves detected, there’s several kinds

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of weird supernovae detected and having an X-ray instrument

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to simultaneously operate while these optical instruments are operating

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will be extremely beneficial. Lisa: Many objects change,

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they have flares and outbursts, so it’s really

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a key observation to have everything from the X-ray, the

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optical, and the UV, all precisely at the same time.

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Stephanie: XMM can contribute to the future by serving

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as a pathfinder to find really interesting sources

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that can then be followed up with the next generation of telescopes.

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Maurice: the continued opportunities for

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time domain studies, which are both

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photon hungry and just overall time hungry, is

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an argument for keeping XMM going for as long as it’s technically feasible.

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Daniel: We really need to support the observatories that we have and

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keeping those aloft, because those are the things that excite everyone about science,

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and especially that excite students to go into it.

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Lisa: I would say that my career has really been inspired

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by XMM-Newton and has followed along it in a lot of different ways

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that I didn’t expect. Laura: It’s remarkable to me that XMM is still performing at the level

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it is 20 years after the mission originated. And really, that’s the best possible

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PR for the mission. (Music)

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[XMM-Newton]

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[20 Years, and looking forward] 

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[Additional interviews and footage courtesy of: ESA/Norbert Schartel, Wayne State University, University of Utah, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory]

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[Explore, Solar System & Beyond. NASA]