MinXSS

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MinXSS

Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer

Measured solar soft X-rays in a small package

The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) program was a four-year, student-led project to design, build, integrate, test, and operate a three-unit CubeSat. The science objective of the first MinXSS mission was to better understand the solar irradiance energy distribution of solar flare soft x-ray emission and its impact on Earth’s ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere. MinXSS-2 had similar objectives, but made improvements on MinXSS such as being placed into a Sun-synchronous orbit at 575km altitude. MinXSS-3 is currently operating and was launched March 1st with the INSPIRE-Sat mission.

Mission Class:

CubeSats

Mission Status:

Past

LASP Roles:

Research, Instruments, Data, Mission Operations, Lead Institute

Science Target:

Sun

Mission Focus:

Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Solar Irradiance, Solar Physics, Thermosphere

Primary Mission Site:

https://lasp.colorado.edu/minxss/

LASP Mission Site:

https://lasp.colorado.edu/minxss/

Launch date: December 6, 2015 (MinXSS); December 3, 2028 (MinXSS-2)
Prime Mission: 1 year (MinXSS); 5 years (MinXSS-2)

Lead Institution: LASP

Lead Funding Agency: National Science Foundation and NASA

Partners: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), NIST Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF), Spaceflight Industries

Solar eruptive event is a classification encompassing several types of energetic release from the coronal magnetic fields. The longest studied of these, solar flares, were first observed by Carrington and Hodgson in 1859. Despite many decades of study and an ever-increasing number and precision of observations, many questions remain: How is an eruptive event powered? What triggers it? How is the energy distributed before, during, and after an eruption? How does that energy impact the Earth’s atmosphere?

science objective of the MinXSS CubeSat is to better understand the solar irradiance energy distribution of solar flare soft X-ray (SXR) emission and its impact on Earth’s ionosphere, thermosphere, and mesosphere (ITM). Energy from SXR radiation is deposited mostly in the ionospheric E-region, from ~80 to ~150 km, but the 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.

XP

X-ray Photometer

SPS

Solar Position Sensor

DAXSS

Dual Aperture X-Ray Solar Spectrometer