Studying the Fast, Furious and Forming Universe in the X-ray and UV with STAR-X

STAR-X is a MIDEX mission that was proposed to NASA HQ in December 2021 and that was selected for a competitive Phase A study in August 2022.  Comprising an X-ray Telescope (XRT) provided by GSFC and MIT, a UV Telescope (UVT) provided by the University of Colorado, and a spacecraft provided by Ball Aerospace, STAR-X is designed to conduct time-domain surveys and to respond rapidly to transient events discovered by other observatories such as LIGO, Rubin/LSST, Roman/WFIRST, and SKA.   STAR-X is a timely response to Astro2020’s recommendation for a space-based, sustaining time-domain and multi-messenger program.    The science theme for the mission is “to study the fast, furious and forming Universe.” The “Fast” theme covers transients such as supernova shock breakouts,  electromagnetic radiation from neutron star-neutron star mergers detected by ground-based gravitational wave detectors and stellar flares that affect exoplanet atmospheres.  The “Furious” theme covers large and rapid amounts of accretion onto black holes, so as to understand rapid black hole growth at earlier times in our Universe, and involves study of Tidal Disruption Events of stars around black holes and time-domain reverberation studies of accretion disk geometry.   The third pillar, “Forming”, concerns the growth of large scale structure in the Universe, covering the growth of massive galaxy clusters from their epoch of formation at z>3 to their ongoing growth from the filaments of the cosmic web at the current time.  This talk will cover the mission architecture, performance, and the science case.    More information on STAR-X, including the full team list, is available at http://star-x.xraydeep.org/