Previous Experiments
The idea to use soft X-rays to study the Earth’s magnetic field came from contaminated measurements which initially puzzled astronomers. In the early 1990s, astronomers had carefully developed soft X-ray detectors for the ROSAT spacecraft and were eagerly awaiting the first results to study the local galaxy. When measurements started coming to Earth the signal showed a significant background that varied on time scales of minutes and hours – far shorter that the hundreds of years time scales at which the local galaxy was though to be changing at. The figure below shows an all sky map of the initial measurements (left) and cleaned ones (right).
ROSAT All-Sky Survey results with (right) and without (left) the removal of background. Color indicates X-ray intensity in units of counts s−1 arcmin-2.
This signal, shown as streaks in the left image above, was not anticipated and initially caused great concern. Eventually researchers identified the signal was coming from the plasma environment surrounding the Earth or the magnetosheath. The time variability was a result of the short-term variation of the solar wind flux and its interaction with the Earth’s neutral atmosphere. The emissions were a result of charge-exchange. Although this was an unwanted background for some, it’s a valuable tool to image the plasma environment surrounding the Earth.
Heritage of Wide Field-of-View soft X-ray Imagers
Soon after recognizing a valuable signal was coming from the Earth’s magnetosheath and cusps, there were efforts to image it. The first flight of a wide field-of-view soft X-ray occurred in 2012 on a sounding rocket launched from White Sands, New Mexico. The detector, called STORM, was developed at NASA Goddard and flew on the Diffuse X-ray emission from the Local galaxy (DXL) sounding rocket (PI: Massimiliano Galeazzi, U. of Miami). The successful flight demonstrated the innovative capabilities of the STORM instrument.
The launch of the STORM instrument on the DXL sounding rocket in 2012.
A similar instrument to DXL/STORM named LEXI is currently under development as part of NASA’s Artemis program with scheduled deployment on the Lunar surface in 2023.
In 2015, a second sounding rocket (DXL2) was launched from White Sands, New Mexico. This time the rocket carried a prototype of the CuPID instrument – the same one set to fly on the CuPID Cubesat Observatory in 2019. The launch demonstrated the successful operation of the instrument in space.
The launch of the CuPID instrument on the DXL 2 sounding rocket in 2015.
Outside of the United States, a joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) mission called SMILE (Solar Wind, Magnetosphere, Ionosphere Link Explorer) is also designed to measure soft X-rays coming from the Earth’s magnetosphere. This mission is currently set to launch into orbit in 2022.
