The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) on the SMILE Mission
S. Sembay, A. L. Alme, D. Agnolon, Thuro Arnold, A. P. Beardmore, Ana Belén Balado Margeli, Chris Bicknell, C. Bouldin, G. Branduardi‐Raymont, Tony Crawford, Jean-Paul Breuer, Thomas W. Buggey, Gillian Butcher, R. Canchal, Jennifer Carter, Andy Cheney, Y. M. Collado‐Vega, Hyunju Connor, Tony Crawford, Nicola Eaton, C. Feldman, C. Forsyth, T. Frantzen, Gábor Galgóczi, Javier A. García, Georgi Genov, C. Gordillo, H-P. Gröbelbauer, M. Guêdel, Yong Guo, M. Hailey, D. Hall, Rory Hampson, J. Hasiba, Oliver Hetherington, Andrew D. Holland, S. W. Hsieh, Michael W. J. Hubbard, H. Jeszenszky, M. Jones, T. Kennedy, K. Koch-Mehrin, S. Kögl, Säm Krucker, K. D. Kuntz, G. Laky, O. Lylund, A. Martindale, J. M. Más-Hesse, R. Nakamura, Kjellmar Oksavik, Nikolai Østgaard, H. Öttacher, R. Ottensamer, C. Pagani, S. Parsons, Pradip Patel, James F. Pearson, G. Peikert, F. S. Porter, T. Pouliantis, Bilal Hasan Qureshi, Walfried Raab, George Randall, A. M. Read, N. M. M. Roque, Maja Elise Rostad, Colin Runciman, S. Sachdev, Andrey Samsonov, Matthew R. Soman, D. G. Sibeck, S. Smit, Jens Søndergaard, Roisin Speight, S. Stavland, M. Steller, Tianran Sun, J. Thornhill, William R. Thomas, K. Ullaland, Brian M. Walsh, David M. Walton, C. Wang, Shiwen Yang, ESTEC, European Space Agency, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands, Genov Solutions, N-5172 Loddefjord, Norway, STM Engineering, N-5165 Laksevag, Norway, Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB), CSIC-INTA, Madrid, Spain
Abstract
The Soft X-ray Imager (SXI) is part of the scientific payload of the Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission. SMILE is a joint science mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and is due for launch in 2025. SXI is a compact X-ray telescope with a wide field-of-view (FOV) capable of encompassing large portions of Earth’s magnetosphere from the vantage point of the SMILE orbit. SXI is sensitive to the soft X-rays produced by the Solar Wind Charge eXchange (SWCX) process produced when heavy ions of solar wind origin interact with neutral particles in Earth’s exosphere. SWCX provides a mechanism for boundary detection within the magnetosphere, such as the position of Earth’s magnetopause, because the solar wind heavy ions have a very low density in regions of closed magnetic field lines. The sensitivity of the SXI is such that it can potentially track movements of the magnetopause on timescales of a few minutes and the orbit of SMILE will enable such movements to be tracked for segments lasting many hours. SXI is led by the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom (UK) with collaborating organisations on hardware, software and science support within the UK, Europe, China and the United States.