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Three technology demonstration modules, each containing three pairs of thin X-ray mirrors
Significance: This slumped glass technique provided some of the world’s best thin grazing-angle X-ray mirror performance at the time, and was the predecessor for even better single-crystal silicon mirrors that are baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: Next Generation X-ray Optics: High Resolution ,Light Weight, and Low Cost
PI: Zhang, William (GSFC)
Scanning Electron Microscope images of cleaved prototype X-ray Critical-Angle Transmission (CAT) grating
Significance: Highest-resolution X-ray grating technology; baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: Development of Fabrication Process for X-Ray CAT Gratings
PI: Mark Schattenburg (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research)
GHz sub-array tile with 128 transition-edge bolometers developed for the BICEP3 ground experiment for Cosmic Microwave Background polarimetry
Significance: Developing antenna designs providing sensitivity, stability, and minimized particle susceptibility for bands required by the Inflation Probe, enabling identification of Inflation instants after the Big Bang
Project Title: Planar Antenna-Coupled Superconducting Detectors for CMB Polarimetry
PI: James Bock (JPL/Caltech)
Test platform for Transition-Edge-Sensor arrays with 32×32-pixel array installed
Significance:TES microcalorimeters offer energy resolution for advanced X-ray observatories such as the European ATHENA mission
Project Title: High-Resolution Imaging X-ray Spectrometer
PI: Caroline Kilbourne (GSFC)
Flat test mirror with square piezo cells mounted to allow figure adjustment and reaction structure for testing adjustable full-shell X-ray mirrors
Significance: Adjustable X-ray optics are a backup technology for the Lynx large mission concept
Project Title: Adjustable X-ray Optics with Sub-Arcsecond Imaging / Moderate Angular Resolution Adjustable Full-shell Grazing Incidence X-ray Optics
PI: Paul Reid (SAO)
CCD X-ray detector with blocking filter deposited on all but a narrow strip on right
Significance: X-ray detectors operate far better when filters allow X-ray photons through and block longer wavelength light
Project Title: Directly-Deposited Blocking Filters for X-ray Imaging Detectors
PI: Mark Bautz (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research)
Thermal testing 43-cm-diameter deep-core mirror from 250 to 300 K
Significance: Deep-core manufacturing enables 4-m-class mirrors such as planned for the HabEx exoplanet observatory concept with significantly lower cost and risk
Project Title: Advanced Mirror Technology Development (AMTD) for Very Large Space Telescopes
PI: H. Philip Stahl (MSFC)
Delta-doped CCD detector fabrication
Significance:Advanced detectors developed by this team are baselined by SHIELDS, HabEx, LUVOIR, and ground facilities
Project Title: High-Efficiency Detectors in Photon Counting and Large Focal Plane Arrays
PI: Shouleh Nikzad (JPL/Caltech)
1.9-THz Local Oscillator (LO) source for a far-IR heterodyne detector
Significance: This high-resolution multi-pixel far-IR detector technology may enable or enhance future missions
Project Title: Heterodyne Technology for SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy)
PI: Paul Goldsmith and Imran Mehdi (JPL)
Alignment and long-term stability testing of off-plane X-ray reflection grating
Significance: X-ray reflection gratings enable high throughput, high spectral resolving power below 2 keV, a spectral band holding major astrophysics interest
Project Title: Off-Plane Grating Arrays for Future Missions
PI: Randall McEntaffer (PSU)
Bottom view of chamber top and 2-m coating chamber bottom
Significance: Advanced coatings with high reflectivity in the far UV enable future astrophysics missions by greatly enhancing system throughput in photon-starved far-UV observations
Project Title: Enhanced Al Mirrors for Far-UV Space Astronomy
PI: Manuel Quijada (GSFC)
Teledyne H4RG near-IR detector array for the Roman Space Telescope (previously WFIRST)
Significance:The Wide-Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope (WFIRST), renamed to the Roman Space Telescope, expected to launch in the mid-2020s, is a NASA observatory designed to study dark energy and dark matter, search for and image exoplanets, and explore many topics in IR astrophysics.
Project Title: H4RG Near-IR Detector Array with 10-µm pixels for WFIRST and Space Astrophysics
PI: Bernard Rauscher (GSFC)
