NASA Scientists Build First-Ever Wide-Field X-ray Imager [1]

NASA.gov - 2/07/13, Lori Keesey

This Black Brant IX rocket carried two instruments designed to study charge exchange, a physical phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space. Credit: NASA

Three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera for studying "charge exchange," a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space.

The unique collaboration involved heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science divisions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and resulted in the first successful demonstration of the Sheath Transport Observer for the Redistribution of Mass (STORM) instrument and a never-before-flown X-ray focusing technology called lobster-eye optics.

To watch the videos and read the rest of this story, visit NASA.gov [2].