Report from the 13th WFI consortium meeting, by Arne Rau
The 13th in the series of semi-annual meetings of the WFI Consortium was held from April 26th to 29th 2021. For the third time in a row, the gathering was organized fully in virtual space, bringing together representatives of all WFI Consortium Partner Institutes, Japan, the Czech Republic, ESA, the German Space Agency, and the X-IFU Consortium.
The plenary sessions kicked off with mission level presentations by ESA representatives P. McNamara, M. Ayre, M. Guainazzi, N. Boudin, and a report on the status of the optics development by M. Bavdaz (also ESA). Focus then shifted to discussing the latest news about the instrument and all of its subsystems. A summary of the status of the X-IFU was given by its PI D. Barret (IRAP). The plenary sessions were accompanied by a series of splinters concentrating on specific topics related to the instrument development, science, science ground segment, and non-X-ray background.
A special session was dedicated to discussing new WFI science ideas. Th. Reiprich (Univ. Bonn) presented highlights from the first eROSITA observations of WHIM filaments associated with nearby galaxies and emphasized the scientific potential of an implementing and efficient large area scanning mode for Athena. A. Majczyna (NCNR) reported on the prospects for Athena precision mass and radius determination for neutron stars.
