The Lunar Environment Heliophysics X-ray Imager (LEXI) Mission
Brian M. Walsh, K. D. Küntz, Sam Busk, T. Cameron, D. Chornay, Agata Chuchra, M. R. Collier, Cadin Connor, Hyunju Connor, T. E. Cravens, Norman Dobson, M. Galeazzi, H. Kim, J. Kujawski, Catriana K. Paw U, F. S. Porter, Van Naldoza, Rousseau Nutter, Ramiz A. Qudsi, D. G. Sibeck, S. Sembay, Michael Shoemaker, Ken Simms, Nicholas E. Thomas, Emil Atz, G. Winkert
Abstract
Abstract The Lunar Environment heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) is a wide field-of-view soft X-ray telescope developed to study solar wind-magnetosphere coupling. LEXI is part of the Blue Ghost 1 mission comprised of 10 payloads to be deployed on the lunar surface. LEXI monitors the dayside magnetopause position and shape as a function of time by observing soft X-rays (0.1–2 keV) emitted from solar wind charge-exchange between exospheric neutrals and high charge-state solar wind plasma in the dayside magnetosheath. Measurements of the shape and position of the magnetopause are used to test temporal models of meso- and macro-scale magnetic reconnection. To image the boundary, LEXI employs lobster-eye optics to focus X-rays to a microchannel plate detector with a 9.1 $^{\circ }\times 9.1^{\circ }$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mmultiscripts><mml:mo>×</mml:mo><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/><mml:mo>∘</mml:mo></mml:mmultiscripts><mml:msup><mml:mn>9.1</mml:mn><mml:mo>∘</mml:mo></mml:msup></mml:math> field of view.