Copy the page URI to the clipboard
Soman, M.R.; Hall, D.J.; Holland, A.D.; Burgon, R.; Buggey, T.; Skottfelt, J.; Sembay, S.; Drumm, P.; Thornhill, J.; Read, A.; Sykes, J.; Walton, D.; Branduardi-Raymont, G.; Kennedy, T.; Raab, W.; Verhoeve, P.; Agnolon, D. and Woffinden, C.
(2018).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/13/01/C01022
Abstract
SMILE, the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer, is a joint science mission between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The spacecraft will be uniquely equipped to study the interaction between the Earth’s magnetosphere-ionosphere system and the solar wind on a global scale. SMILE’s instruments will explore this science through imaging of the solar wind charge exchange soft X-ray emission from the dayside magnetosheath, simultaneous imaging of the UV northern aurora and in-situ monitoring of the solar wind and magnetosheath plasma and magnetic field conditions.
The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) is the instrument being designed to observe X-ray photons emitted by the solar wind charge exchange process at photon energies between 200 eV and 2000 eV. X-rays will be collected using a focal plane array of two custom-designed CCDs, each consisting of 18 µm square pixels in a 4510 by 4510 array.
SMILE will be placed in a highly elliptical polar orbit, passing in and out of the Earth’s radiation belts every 48 hours. Radiation damage accumulated in the CCDs during the mission’s nominal 3-year lifetime will degrade their performance (such as through decreases in charge transfer efficiency), negatively impacting the instrument’s ability to detect low energy X-rays incident on the regions of the CCD image area furthest from the detector outputs. The design of the SMILE-SXI CCDs is presented here, including features and operating methods for mitigating the effects of radiation damage and expected end of life CCD performance. Measurements with a PLATO device that has not been designed for soft X-ray signal levels indicate a temperature-dependent transfer efficiency performance varying between 5 × 10−5 and 9 × 10−4 at expected End of Life for 5.9 keV photons, giving an initial set of measurements from which to extrapolate the performance of the SXI CCDs.
Viewing alternatives
Download history
Metrics
Public Attention
Altmetrics from AltmetricNumber of Citations
Citations from DimensionsItem Actions
Export
About
- Item ORO ID
- 52955
- Item Type
- Journal Item
- ISSN
- 1748-0221
- Extra Information
- Proceeding from the 11th International Conference on Position Sensitive Detectors: 3–8 September 2017, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, UK.
- Keywords
- solid state detectors; space instrumentation; X-ray detectors; X-ray detectors and telescopes
- Academic Unit or School
-
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Physical Sciences
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) - Research Group
-
Centre for Electronic Imaging (CEI)
?? space ?? - Copyright Holders
- © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab
- Depositing User
- Thomas Buggey