Oral Presentation

HXI collimator on board ASO-S mission

Author(s): Dengyi CHEN(PMO); Zhe ZHANG(PMO); Yang SU(PMO);Yiming HU(PMO);Xiankai Jiang(PMO); Wei LIU(PMO)

Presenter: DENGYI Chen (中国科学院紫金山天文台)

The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) was successfully sent to space from Jiuquan Launch center on Oct. 9, 2022. The ASO-S is dedicated to study solar flares, corneal mass eruptions and their connections with solar magnetic field. The ASO-S was operated at 720 kilometers above Earth's surface in a Sun-synchronous orbit containing three instruments: Accordingly, it is comprised of three scientific payloads: a Full-disk solar vector MagnetoGraph (FMG), a Lyman-alpha Solar Telescope (LST), and a solar Hard X-ray lmager (HXI). This paper focuses on HXI which adopts spatial modulation technique to indirectly achieve image of solar hard X-rays. It is made up of three parts, a collimator, a spectrometer and an electrical control box. As the critical component, the collimator is responsible for incident x ray modulation. It includes a titanium framework as main support, a thermal control system, 91 pairs of tungsten grids and a solar aspect system. This paper presents detailed design of HXI, especially the core part collimator. Secondly, ground tests, including characterization and spatial environmental tests of HXI collimator will be reported. Besides, on orbit operation and its performance will be introduced as well since it ran successfully in space after launch. A summary will be given in the end which suggests HXI is fully consistent with initial design.