Solar Flare X-ray Observations with a Cubesat

The X-ray imaging spectrometer STIX onboard ESA’s flagship mission Solar Orbiter was designed and build with a Swiss lead at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). STIX is now in its fourth year of operation and has recorded so far over 45’000 solar flares. The STIX detectors designed by CEA, France, work extremely reliably with all 32 detectors still working nominally showing only minimal degradation due to radiation damage. We still have over 50 STIX flight spare detectors available, and four of those will fly on a NASA cubesat mission called PADRE lead by UC Berkeley (PI J.C. Martinez-Oliveros). In this talk, Säm Krucker will introduce the science of solar flares and the STIX instrument and then show how STIX X-ray detectors are used in the PADRE cubsat mission.

Säm Krucker's main scientific interests are in problems of plasma astrophysics, especially solar and heliospheric physics, from an observational and experimental point of view. He has a strong background in space hardware and I have been the PI of NASA’s Small Explorer mission RHESSI and NASA’s sounding rocket program FOXSI. He is currently the lead of the hard X-ray imaging spectrometer STIX onboard ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission.