![]() The second year was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which enabled the design and manufacture of the first flight prototype. The AES department supported the first year of the project, which focused on development of the CubeSat Card Cage design and assembly. The MinXSS project began as a graduate student project in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences (AES) department at CU and ran through the Spring 2014 semester, with an average of 11 graduate students each semester. In particular, MinXSS directly supports goal number 1 for the NSF Geospace Aeronomy CEDAR(Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions) program: to study the "dynamics and energetics of the upper atmosphere, with particular emphasis on the hard to observe region between 80 and 150 km." The MinXSS mission is most relevant for the NSF Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS). The Amptek X123 SDD is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) instrument that the project acquired it was flown on a NASA sounding rocket in 2012 as part of the project's calibration program for the SDO/EVE instrument. SDD (Silicon Drift Detectors) are the novel technology that enable new solar spectral measurements over a wider range in the SXR. Solid-state (semiconductor) photon-counting detectors work very well for obtaining HXR (Hard X-ray) and gamma ray spectra shorter than 0.5 nm (e.g. Bragg crystal spectrometers, often used in the 1960s and 1970s for solar SXR measurements, have extremely high spectral resolution but a very narrow range of about 1 nm, and they are large and heavy instruments. Grazing-incidence grating spectrometers are only effective longwards of 5-10 nm (e.g., SDO/EVE measures down to 6 nm with 0.1 nm resolution. While simple in concept, the technology to do this in the 1-5 nm range has traditionally been difficult. Measurement requirements: To address the MinXSS science objective, measurements of the solar SXR irradiance (full-disk, not imaging) with spectral resolution better than 1 nm and with accuracy better than 30%. The students will learn – through formal university classes and with hands-on experience – about scientific instrumentation, satellite technology, and science data analysis and modeling techniques. The educational objective of MinXSS is to train students as the next generation STEM ( Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workforce. The MinXSS mission will improve the understanding of how highly variable solar X-rays affect the ITM, advance our knowledge of flare energetics in the SXR, and provide new spectral observations of the solar SXR near the maximum of solar cycle 24. Energy from SXR radiation is deposited mostly in the ionospheric E-region, in the altitude range of ~80 to ~150 km, but the precise altitude is strongly dependent on the SXR spectrum because of the steep slope and structure of the photoionization cross sections of atmospheric gases in this wavelength range.ĭespite many decades of solar SXR observations, almost all have been broadband measurements with insufficient spectral resolution to fully understand the varying contributions of emission lines amongst the underlying thermal and non-thermal continua. The peak solar energy in the SXR is expected to be emitted near 2 nm however, only limited spectral measurements are available near that wavelength to verify this expectation. This project started in 2011 and heavily involves in particular graduate student team members with scientists and engineers at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), located on the east campus at CU. ![]() ![]() MinXSS is a 3U CubeSat solar physics mission of the CU (University of Colorado) at Boulder, designed to better understand the energy distribution of solar flare SXR (Soft X-ray) emissions and its impact on the Earth's ITM (Ionosphere, Thermosphere, and Mesosphere). Spacecraft Launch Mission Status Sensor Complement MinXSS-2 References MinXSS (Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer) Nanosatellite
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