First operation of Transition-Edge Sensors in space with the Micro-X sounding rocket
J. S. Adams, R. Baker, S. R. Bandler, N. Bastidon, M. E. Danowski, W. B. Doriese, M. E. Eckart, E. Figueroa-Feliciano, J. Fuhrman, D. C. Goldfinger, S. N. T. He… 展开作者
J. S. Adams, R. Baker, S. R. Bandler, N. Bastidon, M. E. Danowski, W. B. Doriese, M. E. Eckart, E. Figueroa-Feliciano, J. Fuhrman, D. C. Goldfinger, S. N. T. Heine, G. C. Hilton, A. J. F. Hubbard, D. Jardin, R. L. Kelley, C. A. Kilbourne, R. E. Manzagol-Harwood, D. McCammon, T. Okajima, F. S. Porter, C. D. Reintsema, P. Serlemitsos, S. J. Smith, P. Wikus
发表信息：
Proceedings of the SPIE, Volume 11454, id. 1145414 9 pp. (2021)
With its first flight in 2018, Micro-X became the first program to fly Transition-Edge Sensors and their SQUID readouts in space. The science goal was a high-resolution, spatially resolved X-ray spectrum of the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant. While a rocket pointing error led to no time on target, the data was used to demonstrate the flight performance of the instrument. The detectors observed X-rays from the on-board calibration source, but a susceptibility to external magnetic fields limited their livetime. Accounting for this, no change was observed in detector response between ground operation and flight operation. This paper provides an overview of the first flight performance and focuses on the upgrades made in preparation for reflight. The largest changes have been upgrading the SQUIDs to mitigate magnetic susceptibility, synchronizing the clocks on the digital electronics to minimize beat frequencies, and replacing the mounts between the cryostat and the rocket skin to improve mechanical integrity. As the first flight performance was consistent with performance on the ground, reaching the instrument goals in the laboratory is considered a strong predictor of future flight performance.
The development of CubeSat and more frequent launch chances of sounding rockets are a total game changer to the space program, and it allows us to build space instruments to be more achievable and affordable. Therefore, it gives us a good opportunity to build a small cosmic ray detector which has capabilities to measure the flux, direction, and even energy of cosmic rays at the height above the limitation of balloon experiments, and it may open a new door for building a constellation of detectors to study cosmic ray physics. Compact Scintillator Array Detector (ComSAD) is dedicated for the sou…
Rocket technology, originally developed for military applications, has provided a low-cost observing platform to carry critical and rapid-response scientific investigations for over 70 years. Even with the development of launch vehicles that could put satellites into orbit, high altitude sounding rockets have remained relevant. In addition to science observations, sounding rockets provide a unique technology test platform and a valuable training ground for scientists and engineers. Most importantly, sounding rockets remain the only way to explore the tenuous regions of the Earth's atmosphere (…
A NASA sounding rocket for high contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the Planet Imaging Coronagraphic Technology Using a Reconfigurable Experimental Base (PICTURE-B) payload has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. We present results from the November 2015 launch demonstrating active wavefront sensing in space with a piezoelectric mirror stage and a micromachine deformable mirror along with precision pointing and lightweight optics in space.
The Micro-X sounding rocket flew for the first time on July 22, 2018, becoming the first program to fly Transition-Edge Sensors and multiplexing SQUID readout electronics in space. While a rocket pointing failure led to no time on-target, the success of the flight systems was demonstrated. The successful flight operation of the instrument puts the program in a position to modify the payload for indirect galactic dark matter searches. The payload modifications are motivated by the science requirements of this observation. Micro-X can achieve world-leading sensitivity in the keV regime with a si…
Micro-X is an X-ray sounding rocket payload that had its first flight on July 22, 2018. The goals of the first flight were to operate a transition edge sensor (TES) X-ray microcalorimeter array in space and take a high-resolution spectrum of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. The first flight was considered a partial success. The array and its time-division multiplexing readout system were successfully operated in space, but due to a failure in the attitude control system, no time on-target was acquired. A re-flight has been scheduled for summer 2022. Since the first flight, modifications hav…
The Spectrograph for Photometric Imaging with Numeric Reconstruction (SPINR) sounding rocket experiment was launched on 2000 August 4 to record far-ultraviolet (912-1450 A) spectral and spatial information for the giant reflection nebula in the Upper Scorpius region. The data were divided into three arbitrary bandpasses (912-1029 A, 1030-1200 A, and 1235-1450 A) for which stellar and nebular flux levels were derived. These flux measurements were used to constrain a radiative transfer model and to determine the dust albedo for the Upper Scorpius region. The resulting albedos were 0.28+/-0.07 fo…
The Micro-X sounding rocket is a NASA funded X-ray telescope payload that completed its first flight on July 22, 2018. This event marked the first operation of Transition Edge Sensors (TESs) and their SQUID-based multiplexing readout system in space. Unfortunately, due to an ACS pointing failure, the rocket was spinning during its five minute observation period and no scientific data was collected. However, data collected from the internal calibration source marked a partial success for the payload and offers a unique opportunity to study the response of TESs and SQUIDs in space. Of particular…
We describe SR-POEM, a Galilean test of the weak equivalence principle that is to be conducted during the free fall portion of the flight of a sounding rocket payload. This test of a single pair of substances will have a measurement uncertainty of σ(η) < 2 10^17 after averaging the results of eight separate drops, each of 120 s duration. The entire payload is inverted between successive drops to cancel potential sources of systematic error. The weak equivalence principle measurement is made with a set of four of the SAO laser gauges, which have achieved an Allan deviation of 0.04 pm for an ave…
High-resolution X-ray spectrometers onboard suborbital sounding rockets can search for dark matter candidates that produce X-ray lines, such as decaying keV-scale sterile neutrinos. Even with exposure times and effective areas far smaller than XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, high-resolution, wide field-of-view observations with sounding rockets have competitive sensitivity to decaying sterile neutrinos. We analyze a subset of the 2011 observation by the X-ray Quantum Calorimeter instrument centered on Galactic coordinates l = 165, b = -5 with an effective exposure of 106 seconds, obtainin…
Micro-X is a sounding rocket-borne instrument that uses a microcalorimeter array to perform high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. This instrument flew for the first time on July 22nd, 2018 from the White Sands Missile Range, USA. This flight marks the first successful operation of a Transition-Edge Sensor array and its time division multiplexing read-out system in space. This launch was dedicated to the observation of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. A failure in the attitude control system prevented the rocket from pointing and led to no time on target. The on-board calibration source provid…
A NASA sounding rocket for high-contrast imaging with a visible nulling coronagraph, the PICTURE payload, has made two suborbital attempts to observe the warm dust disk inferred around Epsilon Eridani. The first flight in 2011 demonstrated a 5 milliarcsecond fine pointing system in space. The reduced flight data from the second launch, on 25 November 2015, presented herein, demonstrate active sensing of wavefront phase in space. Despite several anomalies in flight, post-facto reduction phase stepping interferometer data provides insight into the wavefront sensing precision and the system stabi…
First-principles response simulation of wide-gap CdTe-DSDs for the FOXSI solar sounding rocket experiment
Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校空间科学实验室）；Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学物理学系）；Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo（东京大学 Kavli宇宙与物质物理研究所 (Kavli IPMU, WPI)）；International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles (QUP, WPI), KEK（KEK 宇宙与粒子研究量子场测量系统国际中心 (QUP, WPI)）；Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA)（日本宇宙航空研究开发机构宇宙科学研究所 (ISAS/JAXA)）
The flight of the Micro-X sounding rocket on July 22, 2018 marked the first operation of Transition-Edge Sensors and their SQUID readouts in space. The instrument combines the microcalorimeter array with an imaging mirror to take high-resolution spectra from extended X-ray sources. The first flight target was the Cassiopeia~A Supernova Remnant. While a rocket pointing malfunction led to no time on-target, data from the flight was used to evaluate the performance of the instrument and demonstrate the flight viability of the payload. The instrument successfully achieved a stable cryogenic enviro…
I summarize the excitement of my role primarily in the early years of X-ray Astronomy. As a "second-generation" X-ray astronomer, I was privileged to participate in the enormous advance of the field, both technically and astrophysically, that occurred in the late 1960's and 1970's. The remainder of my career has concentrated on the design, construction, calibration, operation, and scientific maintenance of the "cathedral" that is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. I contrast my early experiences with the current environment for the design and development of instrumentation, especially X-ray optics…
Micro-X is a NASA-funded, sounding rocket-borne X-ray imaging spectrometer that will allow high precision measurements of velocity structure, ionization state and elemental composition of extended astrophysical systems. One of the biggest challenges in payload design is to maintain the temperature of the detectors during launch. There are several vibration damping stages to prevent energy transmission from the rocket skin to the detector stage, which causes heating during launch. Each stage should be more rigid than the outer stages to achieve vibrational isolation. We describe a major design …
SpaceWire-based Data Acquisition Network for the Solar Flare Sounding Rocket Experiment FOXSI-4 and FOXSI-5
Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校空间科学实验室）；Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学物理学系）；Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU, WPI), The University of Tokyo（东京大学宇宙数学国际中心（Kavli IPMU，WPI））；University of Minnesota, Twin Cities（明尼苏达大学双城分校）；Department of Space and Astronautical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI（高级研究院天体宇宙科学系（SOKENDAI））；Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA)（日本宇宙航空研究开发机构宇宙科学研究所（ISAS/JAXA））；International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles (QUP, WPI), KEK（高能加速器研究机构量子场测量系统国际中心（QUP，WPI））；National Astronomical Observatory of Japan（日本国立天文台）
The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) is a suite of four instruments designed to study the near infrared (IR) background light from above the Earth's atmosphere. The instrument package comprises two imaging telescopes designed to characterize spatial anisotropy in the extragalactic IR background caused by cosmological structure during the epoch of reionization, a low resolution spectrometer to measure the absolute spectrum of the extragalactic IR background, and a narrow band spectrometer optimized to measure the absolute brightness of the Zodiacal light foreground. In this paper w…
Measuring the temperature and abundance patterns of clouds in the interstellar medium (ISM) provides an observational basis for models of the physical conditions within the clouds, which play an important role in studies of star and planet formation. The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph (CHESS) is a far ultraviolet rocket-borne instrument designed to study the atomic-to-molecular transitions within diffuse molecular and translucent cloud regions. The final two flights of the instrument observed $β^{1}$ Scorpii ($β$ Sco) and $γ$ Arae. We present flight results of interstell…
The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2: An Intensity Mapping Optimized Sounding-rocket Payload to Understand the Near-IR Extragalactic Background Light
This paper presents Rocket Experiment (REX) that was part of a dual payload rocket campaign for NASA's sounding rocket Black Brant IX with water recovery technology. This mission was a suborbital sounding rocket flight that was launched and recovered on April 4, 2018 and targeted the Vela supernova remnant. The purpose of REX was to classify the Technology Readiness Level of onboard devices designed for space applications. The devices were two wide-field X-ray telescopes consisting of a combination of Lobster-Eye (LE) optics with an uncooled Timepix detector (256 x 256 px @ 55 um), and additio…
A sounding-rocket program called the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectro-Polarimeter (CLASP) is proposed to be launched in the summer of 2014. CLASP will observe the solar chromosphere in Ly-alpha (121.567 nm), aiming to detect the linear polarization signal produced by scattering processes and the Hanle effect for the first time. The polarimeter of CLASP consists of a rotating half-waveplate, a beam splitter, and a polarization analyzer. Magnesium Fluoride (MgF2) is used for these optical components, because MgF2 exhibits birefringent property and high transparency at ultraviolet wavelength.
We describe the design, fabrication, integration and characterization of a prototype superconducting filter bank with transition edge sensor readout designed to explore millimetre-wave detection at frequencies in the range 40 to 65 GHz. Results indicate highly uniform filter channel placement in frequency and high overall detection efficiency. The route to a full atmospheric sounding instrument in this frequency range is discussed.
Photon counting detector systems on sounding rocket payloads often require interfacing asynchronous outputs with a synchronously clocked telemetry (TM) stream. Though this can be handled with an on-board computer, there are several low cost alternatives including custom hardware, microcontrollers and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). This paper outlines how a TM interface (TMIF) for detectors on a sounding rocket with asynchronous parallel digital output can be implemented using low cost FPGAs and minimal custom hardware. Low power consumption and high speed FPGAs are available as commer…
NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center（美国国家航空航天局戈达德太空飞行中心）；The Catholic University of America（美国天主教大学）；University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学）；Frontier Development Lab（前沿发展实验室）；SETI Institute（SETI研究所）；Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL)（洛克希德·马丁太阳与天体物理实验室）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；Institut d’astrophysique spatiale（空间天体物理研究所）；University of Oxford（牛津大学）
Solar activity plays a quintessential role in influencing the interplanetary medium and space-weather around the Earth. Remote sensing instruments onboard heliophysics space missions provide a pool of information about the Sun's activity via the measurement of its magnetic field and the emission of light from the multi-layered, multi-thermal, and dynamic solar atmosphere. Extreme UV (EUV) wavelength observations from space help in understanding the subtleties of the outer layers of the Sun, namely the chromosphere and the corona. Unfortunately, such instruments, like the Atmospheric Imaging As…
The Suborbital Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (SPACE) is a novel approach to study the collision properties of submillimeter-sized, highly porous dust aggregates. The experiment was designed, built and carried out to increase our knowledge about the processes dominating the first phase of planet formation. During this phase, the growth of planetary precursors occurs by agglomeration of micrometer-sized dust grains into aggregates of at least millimeters to centimeters in size. However, the formation of larger bodies from the so-formed building blocks is not yet fully understood.…
The Very high Angular resolution ULtraviolet Telescope (VAULT) is a sounding rocket payload built to study the crucial interface between the solar chromosphere and the corona by observing the strongest line in the solar spectrum, the Ly-a line at 1216 Å. In two flights, VAULT succeeded in obtaining the first ever sub-arcsecond (0.5") images of this region with high sensitivity and cadence. Detailed analyses of those observations have contributed significantly to new ideas about the nature of the transition region. Here, we present a broad overview of the Ly-a atmosphere as revealed by the VAUL…
Fifty years ago, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built and flew the first successful spacecraft to another planet: Mariner 2 to Venus. This paper discusses the context of this mission at a crucial phase in the space race between the USA and USSR and its results and legacy. As its first major success, Mariner 2 helped to cement JPL's position as a centre for robotic planetary exploration. Mariner 2 successfully solved the scientific problem of the high temperature observed for Venus by ground-based radio telescopes. It also pioneered new techniques for observing the atmosphere of a plane…
The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) sounding rocket experiment launched on July 30, 2021 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. MaGIXS is a unique solar observing telescope developed to capture X-ray spectral images, in the 6 - 24 Angstrom wavelength range, of coronal active regions. Its novel design takes advantage of recent technological advances related to fabricating and optimizing X-ray optical systems as well as breakthroughs in inversion methodologies necessary to create spectrally pure maps from overlapping spectral images. MaGIXS is the first instrume…
Ultraviolet emission from the first generation of stars in the Universe ionized the intergalactic medium in a process which was completed by z~6; the wavelength of these photons has been redshifted by (1+z) into the near infrared today and can be measured using instruments situated above the Earth's atmosphere. First flying in February 2009, the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) comprises four instruments housed in a single reusable sounding rocket borne payload. CIBER will measure spatial anisotropies in the extragalactic IR background caused by cosmological structure from the epo…
We have developed and characterized an imaging instrument to measure the spatial properties of the diffuse near-infrared extragalactic background light in a search for fluctuations from z > 6 galaxies during the epoch of reionization. The instrument is part of the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER), designed to observe the extragalactic background light above the Earth's atmosphere during a suborbital sounding rocket flight. The imaging instrument incorporates a 2x2 degree field of view, to measure fluctuations over the predicted peak of the spatial power spectrum at 10 arcminutes, …
