Recent progress in X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical plasmas

In recent years, there have been dramatic improvements in our instrumental capabilities for making X-ray spectroscopic measurements of astrophysical plasmas, and even more significant advances will occur in the next few years. It is now possible to detect and study emission line complexes from nearly all cosmically abundant elements (C through Fe) over a very wide range of physical conditions. The data have provided a wealth of new information regarding cosmic plasmas, but have also raised a number of challenges to our basic understanding of relevant atomic processes involving multiply charged ions. I review some of these recent results and provide an overview of where this field is headed in the future.