Grating design for the Water Recovery X-ray Rocket

The Water Recovery X-ray Rocket (WRXR) is a sounding rocket payload that launched from the Kwajalein Atoll in April 2018 and was the first NASA astrophysics sounding rocket payload to be recovered from water. WRXR's primary instrument is a grating spectrometer that consists of a mechanical collimator, X-ray reflection gratings, grazing-incidence mirrors, and a hybrid CMOS detector. We present here the design of the WRXR spectrometer’s gratings and mirrors.

[1]  Benjawan Kjornrattanawanich,et al.  Efficiency of a grazing-incidence off-plane grating in the soft-x-ray region. , 2006, Applied optics.

[2]  Benjamin Ryan Zeiger.  Soft x-ray spectroscopy of the Vela supernova remnant , 2013 .

[3]  David N. Burrows,et al.  Recent X-ray hybrid CMOS detector developments and measurements , 2017, Optical Engineering + Applications.

[4]  Randall L. McEntaffer,et al.  An introduction to the water recovery x-ray rocket , 2017, Optical Engineering + Applications.

[5]  James Tutt,et al.  First results from a next-generation off-plane X-ray diffraction grating , 2013, 1301.5531.

[6]  O. Nentvich,et al.  X-ray Lobster Eye all-sky monitor for rocket experiment , 2017, Optics + Optoelectronics.

[7]  Ryan Allured,et al.  X-ray verification of an optically aligned off-plane grating module. , 2018, Applied optics.

[8]  Mark C. Farris,et al.  Hybrid CMOS x-ray detectors: the next generation for focused x-ray telescopes , 2007, SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications.

[9]  Webster Cash,et al.  The OGRESS sounding rocket payload , 2013, Optics & Photonics - Optical Engineering + Applications.

[10]  W. Cash,et al.  Echelle spectrographs at grazing incidence. , 1982, Applied optics.

[11]  W. Cash,et al.  X-ray spectrographs using radial groove gratings. , 1983, Applied optics.

[12]  Hannah Marlowe,et al.  Line spread functions of blazed off-plane gratings operated in the Littrow mounting , 2016, 1603.04839.

[13]  F. Acero,et al.  OVII and OVIII line emission in the diffuse soft X-ray background: heliospheric and galactic contributions , 2007, 0709.2260.