Paper 13093-274
SUIM project: measuring the upper atmosphere from the ISS by observations of the CXB transmitted through the Earth rim
Abstract
The upper atmosphere at the altitude of 60–110 km, the mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT), has the least observational data of all atmospheres due to the difficulties of in-situ observations. Previous studies demonstrated that atmospheric occultation of cosmic X-ray sources is an effective technique to investigate the MLT. Aiming to measure the atmospheric density of the MLT continuously, we are developing an X-ray camera, “Soipix for observing Upper atmosphere as Iss experiment Mission (SUIM)”, dedicated to atmospheric observations. SUIM will be installed on the exposed area of the International Space Station (ISS) and face the ram direction of the ISS to point toward the Earth rim. Observing the cosmic X-ray background (CXB) transmitted through the atmosphere, we will measure the absorption column density via spectroscopy and thus obtain the density of the upper atmosphere. The X-ray camera is composed of a slit collimator and two X-ray SOI-CMOS pixel sensors (SOIPIX), and will stand on its own and make observations, controlled by a CPU-embedded FPGA “Zynq”. We plan to install the SUIM payload on the ISS in 2025 during the solar maximum. In this paper, we report the overview and the development status of this project.
Presenter
Kumiko K. Nobukawa
Kindai Univ. (Japan)
Kumiko Nobukawa is an X-ray astronomer, and studies diffuse X-ray emissions in our galaxy. Also, she developed X-ray CCDs onboard the Hitomi and XRISM satellites. Recently, she led the development and production of Kindai University's first nano-satellite, SpaceTuna1, which was released from the ISS in 2022. Based on this knowledge and experiments, she conceived a project to measure the upper atmospheric density by observing the CXB transmitted through the Earth rim, and she is the PI of the project.