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Thin single-crystal silicon X-ray mirror segment (before trimming)
Significance: World-class thin grazing-angle X-ray mirror technology; 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)
Fully patterned 200-mm X-ray Critical-Angle Transmission (CAT) grating wafer
Significance: Highest-resolution X-ray grating technology; baselined for Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: Development of a CAT Grating Spectromete
PI: Mark Schattenburg (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research)
Lithographed ‘Polarimeter on a Chip’ enabling large multi-frequency arrays of Transition Edge Sensor (TES) bolometers for Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) 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)
Lynx X-ray Microcalorimeter (LXM) prototype arrays using Transition-Edge Sensors (TESs) – 8” wafers cored down into 4” wafers
Significance: TES microcalorimeters offer energy resolution that may enable future missions such as the Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Microcalorimeters: TES Microcalorimeters
PI: Caroline Kilbourne (GSFC)
First Magnetically-Coupled Microcalorimeters (MMCs) fabricated with buried meander coils
Significance: MMCs offer energy resolution that may enable future X-ray missions such as the Lynx X-ray flagship mission concept
Project Title: MMC Arrays for X-ray Astrophysics
PI: Simon Bandler (GSFC)
X-ray testing of Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) replicated shell shows improved results in polished area
Significance: High-quality X-ray optics may enable or enhance future Astrophysics missions
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Optics: Computer-Controlled Polishing of High-Quality Mandrels
PI: Jacqueline Davis (MSFC)
CCD image demonstrating improvement in performance after optics figure corrected using differential deposition
Significance: High-quality X-ray optics may enable or enhance future Astrophysics missions
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Optics: Differential Deposition for Figure Correction in X-Ray Optics
PI: Kiranmayee Kilaru (MSFC)
Aluminum surrogate shell for testing full-shell direct polishing method
Significance: High-quality X-ray optics may enable future X-ray missions
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Optics: Full-Shell Direct Polishing
PI: Stephen Bongiorno (MSFC)
MSFC’s novel in-situ stress measurement device to be adapted for measuring stress in coatings deposited on curved X-ray mirror segments
Significance: High-quality X-ray optics may enable future missions
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Optics: Mirror Coatings
PI: David Broadway (MSFC)
Mold for X-ray optics derived from highly figured and polished mandrels traditionally used for electroforming full-shell X-ray optics
Significance: Low-cost, lightweight, high-quality X-ray optics may enable many future missions
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Optics: Hybrid X-Ray Optics by Additive Manufacturing
PI: David Broadway (MSFC)
Curved 10×10 cm2 0.4-mm-thick X-ray mirror sample, with piezo cells mounted on back
Significance: Adjustable X-ray optics are a backup technology for the Lynx X-ray large mission concept
Project Title: Adjustable X-Ray Optics
PI: Paul Reid (SAO)
Pre-project 0.25-megapixel front-illuminated (FI) X-ray CCD (left) and 0.5-megapixel FI X-ray CCD designed for the project (right)
Significance: Advanced X-ray detectors may enable the Lynx large mission concept
Project Title: Toward Fast, Low-Noise, Radiation Tolerant X-ray Imaging Arrays for Lynx: Raising Technology Readiness Further
PI: Mark Bautz (MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research)
Measuring Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD) Reflectance
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)
Kevlar suspension system designed for Continuous Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator (CADR) cooling system
Significance: This advanced sub-Kelvin cooling technology has been baselined by Lynx, Origins, PICO, and GEP
Project Title: High-Efficiency Continuous Cooling for Cryogenic Instruments and sub-Kelvin Detectors
PI: James Tuttle (GSFC)
Detector unit cell design of interposer substrate with through-wafer vias for connecting 2D super-conducting detectors to cold readout electronics
Significance: This new technique may enable the Origins large mission concept
Project Title: Development of a Robust, Efficient Process to Produce Scalable, Superconducting Kilopixel Far-IR Detector Arrays
PI: Johannes Staguhn (JHU & GSFC)
Ionospheric Connection (ICON) Explorer UV optics coated by this GSFC group
Significance: High far-UV reflectance is prevented by oxidation of aluminum mirrors; removing it may enable future far-UV missions
Project Title: E-Beam-Generated Plasma Etching for Developing High-Reflectance Mirrors for Far-UV Astronomical Instrument Applications
PI: Manuel Quijada (GSFC)
Hermetic and RF seals for testing Transition-Edge-Sensor (TES) bolometers
Significance: Extremely sensitive far-IR detectors may enable future missions
Project Title: Ultra-Sensitive Bolometers for Far-IR Space Spectroscopy at the Background Limit
PI: C. Matt Bradford (JPL)
Optimized device designs needed for 16-pixel 1.9-THz heterodyne detector
Significance: Further development of this high-resolution far-IR detector technology to higher pixel numbers may enable or enhance future missions
Project Title: Development of High-Resolution Far-IR Arrays
PI: Imran Mehdi (JPL)
Thermal optical test of ULE® mirror at MSFC X-Ray & Cryogenic Facility (XRCF)
Significance: This technology may enable required ultra-stability (~10 pm) for HabEx and LUVOIR missions
Project Title: Predictive Thermal Control (PTC) Technology to enable Thermally Stable Telescopes
PI: H. Philip Stahl (MSFC)
Frequency-Domain Multiplexing (FDM) bolometer readout (SQUID, Superconducting QUantum Interference Device)
Significance: This and related technologies may enable future Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) missions, e.g. LiteBIRD
Project Title: Technology Development for LiteBIRD and other CMB Missions
PI: Adrian T. Lee (UC Berkeley)
First large-format array of electrostatically activated microshutter arrays on a 6” wafer process (top left) compared to array developed for JWST
Significance:May enable sparse-field multi-object spectroscopy for e.g. LUVOIR, HabEx, CETUS, and/or AERIE
Project Title: Scalable Microshutter Systems for UV, Visible, and IR Spectroscopy
PI: Matt Greenhouse (GSFC)
CsI opaque photocathode deposited onto a 20-µm-pore, 33-mm, 60:1 L/d, Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) Multi-Channel Plate (MCP) with MgO and 13⁰-pore-bias
Significance: This detector technology is baselined by HabEx, LUVOIR, and CETUS for UV/Visible light detection
Project Title: High-Performance Sealed-Tube Cross-Strip (XS) Photon-Counting Sensors for UV-Vis Astrophysics Instruments
PI: Oswald Siegmund (UC Berkeley)
X-ray Raman spectroscopy (XRS)/ Electron Beam Ion Trap (EBIT) experiment on the Flash EBIT at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser (Nature, 12/2012)
Significance: The project supports NASA X-ray observatories by developing similar instruments in ground-based labs, replicating conditions in astrophysical sources observed by spaceflight instruments, and observing them parametrically to help interpret space-based data
Project Title: Advanced X-ray Microcalorimeters: Lab Spectroscopy for Space Atomic Physics
PI: F. Scott Porter (GSFC)
Detector-integrated multilayer AlF3 /Al filters
Significance: Advanced detectors developed by this project are baselined by SHIELDS, HabEx, LUVOIR, and ground facilities are fabricated using Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) coatin
Project Title: Advanced FUV/UV/Visible Photon-Counting and Ultralow-Noise Detectors
PI: Shouleh Nikzad (JPL/Caltech)
100×100 mm2 Multi-Channel Plate (MCP) detector with ASIC electronics qualified for flight
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)
Array of Distributed Feedback (DFB) lasers at ~4.7 THz; the harmonic mixer is used to phase-lock the Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) Local Oscillator (LO)
Significance: This technology provides 4.7-THz LOs, enabling far-IR/sub-mm missions such as the balloon-borne Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory (GUSTO)
Project Title: Raising the Technology Readiness of 4.7-THz local oscillators
PI: Qing Hu (MIT)
ASU Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (PEALD) system for fluoride mirror coatings
Significance: High-reflectance UV coatings would vastly improve system throughput for photon-starved UV astronomy; this system attempted to develop advanced technique for depositing high-reflectance UV coatings
Project Title: Improving UV Coatings and Filters using Innovative Materials Deposited by ALD
PI: Paul Scowen (ASU)
Ultra-stable chamber built to test few-picometer-level metrology technology
Significance: Ultra-stability and -precision (~10 pm) may enable the HabEx and LUVOIR missions
Project Title: Ultra-Stable Structures
PI: Babak Saif (GSFC)
