ATHENA is a European Space Agency mission selected in 2014 for 2nd Large mission opportunity, satisfying the Cosmic Vision theme the "Hot and Energetic Universe" with preliminary launch in early 30-ties to L2 (Lagrange 2) Sun-Earth point. The main goal of Athena is to research the Universe in X-Ray domain with two main instruments and X-Ray mirror system based on novel Silicon Pore Optics (SPO) technology allowing spacial accuracy on the level of 5 arc seconds in the energy region of 1-10 keV.

X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) will be Athena's cryogenic imaging spectrometer with unprecedented energy resolution, over a field of view a few arc minutes across.

Wide Field Imager (WFI) the Athena's imager based on a silicon active pixel sensor with a large field of view.