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Silicon block with polished cylindrical surface and lightweight silicon X-ray mirror substrate
Significance: World-class thin grazing-angle X-ray mirror technology; baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: High-Resolution and Lightweight X-ray Optics for the X-ray Surveyor
PI: Zhang, William (GSFC)
Prototype X-ray Critical-Angle Transmission grating with quarter coin for scale
Significance:Highest-resolution X-ray grating technology; baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: Development of a CAT Grating Spectrometer
PI: Mark Schattenburg (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research)
SPIDER payload with bolometer arrays for Cosmic Microwave Background polarimetry undergoing integration and test
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)
ATHENA-scale Transition-Edge-Sensor 64×64 array with 16×16-pixel corners removed
Significance: TES microcalorimeters offer energy resolution for the European ATHENA mission
Project Title: Providing enabling and enhancing technologies for a demonstration model of the ATHENA X-ray Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)
PI: Caroline Kilbourne (GSFC)
Strain gauges mounted to piezo cells to allow figure adjustment of thin 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
PI: Paul Reid (SAO)
150-mm wafer containing four CCID41 (CCD) X-ray detectors
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)
Low-temperature testing of Digital Micro-mirror Device done as part of flight qualification
Significance: Replacing windows of commercially available DMDs may enable far-UV multi-object spectrometry in future missions
Project Title: Development of DMDs for Far-UV Applications
PI: Zoran Ninkov (RIT)
Modulus-of-Rupture boxes cut out of glass boule using abrasive water jet and placed in storage fixture for future low-temperature-fusion assembly
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
2-Megapixel delta-doped CCD detectors on wafer and as packaged die
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 for Astrophysics Missions
PI: Shouleh Nikzad (JPL/Caltech)
50 mm polyimide cross-strip anode used for 50×50 mm2 Multi-Channel Plate (MCP) detector
Significance: Large-format low-noise detectors may enable future far-UV missions
Project Title: High-Performance Cross-Strip MCP Detectors
PI: John Vallerga (UC Berkeley)
Testbed for measuring scattered light in prototype Laser Interferometer Space Antenna telescope
Significance: The LISA gravitational-wave observatory crucially depends on collecting laser light from a remote spacecraft, millions of km away
Project Title: Telescope for a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Mission
PI: Jeffrey Livas (GSFC)
Installation of frequency-reference cavity for oscillator tests used in developing a prototype laser for the LISA gravitational-wave observatory
Significance: LISA crucially depends on lasers to allow interferometric measurement of the multi-million-km distance between the three spacecraft; technology readiness level (TRL) of 5 is needed for infusion into the mission
Project Title: Demonstration of a TRL-5 Laser System for LISA
PI: Jordan Camp (GSFC)
Colloid microthruster propellant tank and controls developed to allow a gravitational-wave (GW) observatory in space
Significance: LISA crucially depends on microthrusters to keep its three spacecraft floating around the free-falling test masses within each, to allow interferometric measurement of the multi-million-km distance between each pair of spacecraft
Project Title: Colloid Microthruster Propellant Feed System for GW Astrophysics Missions
PI: John Ziemer (JPL)
Magnified image of last-stage tripler for controlling pixel power in an array receiver
Significance: This high-resolution multi-pixel far-IR detector technology may enable or enhance future missions
Project Title: A Far-IR Heterodyne Array Receiver for CII and OI Mapping
PI: Imran Mehdi (JPL)
27×16-pixel ground-based Kinetic Inductance Detector (KID) array
Significance: Polarization-sensitive arrays in the far-IR can provide critical information on the role of magnetic fields in galaxy formation and evolution, and star formation in our galaxy and nearby galaxies
Project Title: KID Imaging Arrays for Far-IR Astrophysics
PI: Jonas Zmuidzinas (JPL)
Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) image of grooved surface for 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: Reflection Grating Modules: Alignment and Testing
PI: Randall McEntaffer (PSU)
Coating fixture enabling dual-dielectric deposition in 2-m coating chamber
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)
Gas cell test assembly (left) and same cell with Brewster windows (right)
Significance:A highly stable laser simultaneously locked to a cavity and a molecular transition at a telecom wavelength can provide a highly coherent light source for future missions
Project Title: Laser Stabilization with CO
PI: John Lipa (Stanford University)