Paper 13103-36
SSAXI-Rocket delta-doped CMOS sensors
Abstract
Current-generation solar observatories employ CCD image sensors to observe the Sun in the soft x-ray (SXR) and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) regimes. However, these observations are often compromised by pixel saturation and charge blooming in the CCD image sensors when observing large solar flares. To address these limitations, the Swift Solar Activity x-ray Imager Rocket (SSAXI-Rocket) program is developing CMOS image sensors (CIS) with low noise and high-speed readout (greater than 5Hz) for next-generation solar observatories. These CIS aim to enable the observation of large solar flares while significantly reducing the effects of pixel saturation and charge blooming. As a part of NASA’s 2024 solar flare sounding rocket campaign, the SSAXI-Rocket program demonstrated delta-doped CIS technology in a space environment by operating a novel camera as a sub-payload on board the High-Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) sounding rocket. This paper describes the pre-launch laboratory tests performed with the SSAXI-Rocket CIS to characterize its linearity and soft x-ray spectral resolution.
Presenter
Sophia A. Sánchez-Maes
Ctr. for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (United States)
Sophia Sánchez-Maes is a Ph.D. candidate in Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian, and deputy Principal Investigator for the Swift Solar Activity X-ray Imager (SSAXI-Rocket) mission. Sánchez-Maes’s science centers magnetic reconnection and energy partition in the active sun, and she uses magnetohydrodynamic simulations to connect observed data to the underlying plasma physics. In the lab, Sánchez-Maes works collaboratively to develop instrumentation and realize the x-ray optic and detector systems for the SSAXI-Rocket rocket mission and its successors. Sánchez-Maes is also working to develop and characterize new CMOS detectors for a myriad of ground and space-based projects in astronomy.