System design and implementation of the detector assembly of the Astro-H soft x-ray spectrometer
Abstract
The soft x-ray spectrometer (SXS) on-board Astro-H presents to the science community unprecedented capability (<7 eV full width half max at 6 keV) for high-resolution spectral measurements in the range of 0.5 to 12 keV to study extended celestial sources. At the heart of the SXS is the x-ray calorimeter spectrometer (XCS) where detectors (calorimeter array and anticoincidence detector) operate at 50 mK, the bias circuit operates at nominal 1.3 K, and the first stage amplifiers operate at 130 K, all within a nominal 20-cm envelope. The design of the detector assembly (DA) in the XCS originates from the Astro-E x-ray spectrometer (XRS) and lessons learned from Astro-E and Suzaku. After the production of our engineering model, additional changes were made to improve our flight assembly process for better reliability and overall performance. We present the final design and implementation of the flight DA, compare its parameters and performance with Suzaku's XRS, and list susceptibilities to other subsystems as well as our lessons learned.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems
- Pub Date:
- April 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1117/1.JATIS.4.2.021404
- Bibcode:
- 2018JATIS...4b1404C