Instrument overview of the Swift Solar Activity X-ray Imager (SSAXI-Rocket)

Abstract

The Swift Solar Activity X-Ray Imager (SSAXI-Rocket) sounding rocket experiment is a direct-imaging, soft Xray telescope optimized for the observation of large (GOES C class-X class) solar flares. SSAXI-Rocket has high temporal sampling cadence (> 5 Hz) enabled by a fast-readout CMOS detector. A single Wolter-1 optic focuses light onto the detector plane. The optic has a 15.8 ′′ half-power diameter (HPD) angular resolution on-axis and an effective area of 0.64 cm 2 at 4.5 keV. The SSAXI-Rocket camera reads out a spectrally integrated signal, and the system spatial resolution is designed to be < 16 ′′ HPD over the instrument field of view (> 55 ′ × 55 ′ ). The detector is a back-illuminated delta doped CMOS (2048 × 2048 pixels) with 10 µm pitch pixels. This manuscript details our instrument design, and overviews the processes employed in telescope alignment, testing, delivery, and integration onto the Hi-C Sounding Rocket. We present the "as-built" projected flight performance of the delivered SSAXI-Rocket flight system, obtained by synthesizing the results of pre-flight subsystem testing and measurements performed during system integration and alignment.