The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) - A mission for global magnetospheric imaging
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.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMSM029..01W
- Keywords:
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- 2736 Magnetosphere/ionosphere interactions;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 2740 Magnetospheric configuration and dynamics;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 2756 Planetary magnetospheres;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 2794 Instruments and techniques;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS