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Technology Development Module containing three pairs of parabolic-hyperbolic X-ray mirror segments
Significance: World-class thin grazing-angle X-ray mirror technology; baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: High-Resolution and Light-weight X-ray Optics for the X-ray Surveyor
PI: Zhang, William (GSFC)
Detail of hierarchical support levels of X-ray Critical-Angle Transmission gratings
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)
Antenna-coupled Transition-Edge-Sensor Bolometers for Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimetry; lithographed ‘Polarimeter on a Chip’ Enables Large Arrays
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)
Photo and Scanning Electron Microscope image of two types of absorbers for hybrid Transition-Edge-Sensor arrays fabricated on single Si substrate
Significance: TES microcalorimeters offer energy resolution for the European ATHENA X-ray mission’s Integral Field Unit (X-IFU)
Project Title: Providing enabling and enhancing technologies for a demonstration model of the ATHENA X-IFU
PI: Caroline Kilbourne (GSFC)
Test X-ray mirror with integrated adjustment piezo actuators and control electronics
Significance: Adjustable X-ray optics are a backup technology for the Lynx large mission concept
Project Title: Development of 0.5-Arc-second Adjustable Grazing-Incidence X-ray Mirrors for the SMART-X Mission Concept
PI: Paul Reid (SAO)
Radiation test setup for Digital Micro-mirror Device
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)
Harris “deep-core” mirror successfully demonstrating 5-layer ‘stack & fuse’ technique
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)
FIREBall balloon payload’s Electron-Multiplied CCD detectors; images show wafers before (left) and after (right) Atomic-Layer-Deposition (ALD) coating
Significance:Advanced coatings enable high-performance detectors
Project Title: Advanced FUV/UV/Visible Photon-Counting and Ultralow-Noise Detectors
PI: Shouleh Nikzad (JPL/Caltech)
96-mm cross-strip laboratory detector and readout electronics
Significance: Large-format low-noise detectors may enable future far-UV missions
Project Title: Development of 100×100 mm2 photon-counting UV detectors
PI: John Vallerga (UC Berkeley)
50/220-GHz planar orthomode transducer focal plane with feedhorns machined directly into Si-Al package for performing Cosmic Microwave Background measurements
Significance: CMB measurements may enable identification of the “Inflation” cosmologists believe may have occurred instants after the Big Bang
Project Title: High Efficiency Feedhorn-Coupled TES-based Detectors for CMB Polarization
PI: Edward Wollack (GSFC)
Primary mirror for prototype Laser Interferometer Space Antenna telescope
Significance:The LISA gravitational-wave (GW) observatory crucially depends on collecting laser light from a remote spacecraft, millions of km away
Project Title: Telescope for a Space-based GW Mission
PI: Jeffrey Livas (GSFC)
Fiber amplifier for lasers enabling the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna 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)
Engineering Model versions of GRACE Follow-On subsystems used to develop phasemeter for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna gravitational-wave observatory
Significance: LISA needs a phasemeter system to allow interferometric measurement of the multi-million-km distance between the three spacecraft
Project Title: Phase Measurement System Development for Interferometric GW Detectors
PI: William Klipstein (JPL)
1.9-THz mixer block developed for multi-pixel Local Oscillator (LO) and test setup
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 C+ and OI Mapping
PI: Imran Mehdi (JPL)
X-ray reflection gratings at PANTER test beam lin
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)
Multi-pressure Brewster cell with removable windows (left) and Immersed cell incorporating piezo actuators (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)
