Structural modeling and mechanical tests supporting the design of the ATHENA X-IFU thermal filters and WFI optical blocking filter

ATHENA is a Large high energy astrophysics space mission selected by ESA in the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Science Program. It will be equipped with two interchangeable focal plane detectors: the X-Ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU) and the Wide Field Imager (WFI). Both detectors require x-ray transparent filters to fully exploit their sensitivity.