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The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) sounding rocket experiment launched on 2021 July 30 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. MaGIXS is a unique solar observing telescope developed to capture X-ray spectral images of coronal active regions in the 6–24 Å wavelength range. Its novel design takes advantage of recent technological advances related to fabricating and optimizing X-ray optical systems, as well as breakthroughs in inversion methodologies necessary to create spectrally pure maps from overlapping spectral images. MaGIXS is the first instrument of its kind to provide spatially resolved soft X-ray spectra across a wide field of view. The plasma diagnostics available in this spectral regime make this instrument a powerful tool for probing solar coronal heating. This paper presents details from the first MaGIXS flight, the captured observations, the data processing and inversion techniques, and the first science results.

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Accurate predictions of harmful space weather effects are mandatory for the protection of astronauts and other assets in space, whether in Earth or lunar orbit, in transit between solar system objects, or on the surface of other planetary bodies. Because the corona is multithermal (i.e., structured not only in space but also in temperature), wavelength-separated data provide crucial information that is not available to imaging methods that integrate over temperature. The extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths enable us to focus directly on high temperature coronal plasma associated with solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and shocked material without being overwhelmed by intensity from the solar disk. Both wide-field imaging and spectroscopic observations of the solar corona taken from a variety of orbits (e.g., Earth, L1, or L5) using suitably-chosen EUV instrumentation offer the possibility of addressing two major goals to enhance our space weather prediction capability, namely: 1.) Improve our understanding of the coronal conditions that control the opening and closing of the corona to the heliosphere and consequent solar wind streams, and 2.) Improve our understanding of the physical processes that control the early evolution of CMEs and the formation of shocks, from the solar surface out into the extended corona.

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