088421

SN 1987A was the first naked eye supernova since Kepler.s SN of 1604. In the last few years the blast wave has been interacting with the dense circumstellar material which provided us the first opportunity to monitor the evolution from a supernova to a supernova remnant. SNR 1987A is now entering a new evolution stage. We expect to detect for the first time the X-ray emission from the shocked ejecta and the high-latitude material beyond the equatorial ring in the nearest future. This new information will allow us to deeper study the explosion mechanism and progenitor properties. It could be also important to look for non-thermal X-rays related to the particle acceleration. Aiming at these new features we propose a 90 ks XMM-Newton observation of SNR 1987A. [truncated! Please see actual data for full text]