SA023-03
The AEPEX Mission: Atmospheric Effects of Precipitation through Energetic X-rays

Monday, 14 December 2020: 11:36
Virtual
Grant Berland1, Robert Andrew Marshall1, Wei Xu1, Thomas N Woods2, Christopher M Cully3, Allison N Jaynes4, Cora E Randall5, Daniel N Baker6, Michael P McCarthy7, Harlan E. Spence8 and Rick Kohnert5, (1)University of Colorado at Boulder, Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)University of Colorado Boulder, LASP, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, (4)University of Iowa, Physics & Astronomy, Iowa City, IA, United States, (5)Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (7)University of Washington Seattle Campus, Earth and Space Sciences, Seattle, WA, United States, (8)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
Abstract:
Energetic particle precipitation (EPP) is a source of loss from the radiation belts, alters atmospheric chemistry, and is a major coupling mechanism between the magnetosphere and the ITM system. Although the impact of EPP on the atmosphere through ionization is substantial, the spatial, temporal, and total energy deposition scales are poorly constrained. EPP rates during geomagnetic storms, substorms, and other solar-terrestrial coupling events are open questions.

We present a novel approach to measuring EPP from space using two instruments onboard the upcoming cubesat mission AEPEX, the Atmospheric Effects of Precipitation through Energetic X-rays: a novel X-ray imaging system, the Atmospheric X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (AXIS), and AFIRE, a copy of the FIRE energetic electron detector used onboard the FIREBIRD mission [Crew, et al., 2016]. AXIS takes advantage of off-the-shelf CZT detectors to extend X-ray energy measurements to 50-300 keV. A modified uniformly redundant array (MURA) coded aperture system [Gottesman, S.R. and Fenimore, E.E., 1989] and graded-Z shielding are designed to provide spatial resolution of ~100 km and reduce background counts on the detectors from the LEO radiation environment. Histograms of X-ray counts will be taken with 10 second time resolution in order to capture EPP events on short timescales. AXIS can also be used to obtain integrated X-ray emission rates over longer time scales to determine how EPP energy deposition varies with different magnetospheric conditions. An inversion technique will be employed to determine the precipitating electron flux [Xu, W. and Marshall, R.A., 2019]. The work here will describe the AEPEX mission, the AXIS instrument design and simulated performance, and the coded aperture imaging technique.

The AEPEX mission will perform a local and comprehensive measurement of EPP that can be used in conjunction with satellites and ground stations to enhance ITM science from the effects of EPP. Further, a constellation of AEPEX-like missions could provide a real-time estimate of global EPP rates with localized measurements that can resolve mesoscale magnetospheric coupling phenomenon with the ITM system.

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