The Current Status of the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope

The Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) is China's first astronomical satellite. On board HXMT there are three kinds of slat-collimated telescopes, the High Energy X-ray Telescope (HE, 20-250 keV, 5000 cm(2)), the Medium Energy X-ray Telescope (ME, 5-30 keV, 952 cm(2)), and the Low Energy X-ray Telescope (LE, 1-15 keV, 394cm(2)). The typical Field of View (FOV) of HXMT is 1 degrees x6 degrees (FWHM), and it has other FOVs so as to measure the cosmic and the local particle induced X-ray backgrounds. The 3-sigma continuum sensitivity of HXMT is about 0.5 mCrab (10(5)s). HXMT will perform a broad band (1-250 keV) X-ray sky survey and do pointed observations of X-ray sources to study their broadband spectra and the multi-wavelength temporal variabilities. The planned launch date of HXMT is around 2014/2015. It will run in a low earth orbit with an inclination angle of 43 degrees, and its designed lifetime is 4 years. Now HXMT is in the pre-flight model construction phase