SM029-01
The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) – A mission for global magnetospheric imaging

Friday, 11 December 2020: 16:00
Virtual
Brian Walsh1, Michael R Collier2, Sam Busk1, Hyunju KIM Connor3, Kip D Kuntz4, Jeff McShane1, Van Naldoza1, Catriana Paw U1, Frederick S. Porter5,6, David G Sibeck2, Steven Sembay7 and Nicholas Thomas8, (1)Boston University, Boston, United States, (2)NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK, United States, (4)Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, (5)University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, United States, (6)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 662, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (7)University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom, (8)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
LEXI is a wide field-of-view soft X-ray telescope designed to image the Earth’s magnetopause from the lunar surface. Soft X-rays are emitted from charge-exchange between the Earth’s exospheric neutrals and shocked solar wind plasma in the Earth’s magnetosheath. This emission will be imaged by LEXI to delineate the dayside magnetopause boundary as a function of time and will generate the first image of our magnetosphere’s boundary. These measurements will be used to study the macroscale temporal properties of magnetic reconnection through monitoring the magnetopause motion. The mission targets the question, under what conditions is magnetopause reconnection stable versus temporally bursty? LEXI is being developed as part of the NASA Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads (LSITP) program and is scheduled to be deployed to the lunar surface on a lander in 2022.
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