FOXSI

For the latest FOXSI news, check out the FOXSI blog,  or find us on Google+, or Lindsay’s blog.

Background

The Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI) is a sounding rocket payload funded in 2008 by the NASA Low Cost Access to Space (LCAS) program to test hard x-ray focusing optics and position-sensitive solid state detectors for solar observations.

The FOXSI project is led by Dr. S. Krucker at the Space Science Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. B. Ramsey, at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, with experience from the HERO balloon project, is providing the grazing-incidence hard x-ray optics, while the Astro H team at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), led by Prof. T. Takahashi, is providing the detectors.

Today’s solar hard x-ray instruments (such as RHESSI) provide excellent spatial and spectral resolution. Yet, due to the use of indirect imaging, hard x-ray solar images have low dynamic range and sensitivity. These limitations make it difficult to study faint x-ray sources in the solar corona which are crucial for understanding the particle acceleration process which occurs in solar flares. FOXSI will be the first mission to image high energy x-ray from the Sun directly using new grazing-incidence x-ray focusing optics combined with position-sensitive solid state detectors.  Using these new technologies, FOXSI will be 50 times more sensitive than previous instruments and will be able to observe electrons as they are being accelerated by solar flares, watch them as they travel through the solar corona, and provide essential quantitative measurements such as energy spectra, density, and energy content of these accelerated electrons.

FOXSI’s launch date is Novembre 2nd 2012 and will be launching from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico (see it in google maps).

FOXSI Specs

• Optics Characteristics
  • Focal length: 2 m
  • Optics Type: Wolter I
  • Number of shells: 7 (10)
  • Number of modules: 7
  • Angular Resolution: 8 arcsec
• Detector Characteristics
  • Type: Double Sided Silicon (CdTe) Strip Detector, 500 um thick
  • Energy resolution: ~1 keV
  • Low energy threshold: ~5 keV
  • Detector Pitch: 75 um
  • Dimensions: 128 x 128 strips (9.6 mm x 9.6 mm)
• Telescope Characteristics
  • Energy Range: ~5 to 15 keV, 200 um Be entrance window
  • Field of View: 960×960 arcsec, ~1/4 Sun
  • Effective area: 180 cm² @ 8 keV, 14 cm² @ 15 keV
  • Sensitivity: ~50 x RHESSI
  • Dynamic Range: 100 for source separation > 30 arcsec, ~10 x RHESSI
• Mission Characteristics
  • Rocket: Terrier-Black Brant (Mod 2)
  • Apogee Altitude: 310 km
  • Observation time: ~360 s
  • Telemetry Rate: 2.048 Mbits/s

* Numbers in parenthesis represent values for FOXSI2, a second flight with upgraded optics and detectors.

FOXSI Team

• Dr. Säm Krucker
  Principal Investigator, Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB
• Dr. Steven Christe
  Project Scientist/Manager, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Lindsay Glesener
  Graduate Student, Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB
• Stephen McBride
  Lead Electrical Engineer, Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB
• Paul Turin
  Lead Mechanical Engineer, Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB
• David Glaser
  Mechanical Engineer, Space Sciences Laboratory at UCB
• Dr. Brian Ramsey
  NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
• Prof. T. Takahashi
  Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, JAXA & University of Tokyo

FOXSI Presentations

• 2011 SPIE Meeting Proceedings
• 2011 SPD Meeting (Las Cruces)
• 2010 SPD Meeting (Miami)
• 2009 Fall AGU Meeting (San Francisco)
• 2009 SPIE Meeting Proceedings
• 2009 SPD Meeting (Boulder)

FOXSI Publications

• The Focusing Optics x-ray Solar Imager: FOXSI – SPIE 2011 Proceedings (presentation pptx, paper pdf)
• The Focusing Optics x-ray Solar Imager: FOXSI – SPIE 2009 Proceedings (pdf)

FOXSI Pictures

The FOXSI Payload

For more photos, check out FOXSI on Google Plus.