Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer Reflight (MaGIXS 2)

X-ray spectroscopy provides unique capabilities for answering fundamental questions in solar physics. The soft X-ray (SXR) regime is dominated by emission lines formed at high temperatures, with untapped potential to yield insights into basic physical processes of the Sun and stars that are not accessible by any other means. The Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS) is a sounding rocket instrument developed as a pathfinder to acquire the first ever simultaneous spatially and high-resolution spectrally resolved X-ray observations of the solar corona in the SXR wavelength range. MaGIXS was launched on July 30, 2021. Though MaGIXS successfully observed SXR spectra, several issues led to less than optimal data. Over the decade of MaGIXS development, the instrument evolved significantly. Most notably, the original MaGIXS slit was replaced with a slot. The alteration occurred late in integration, but we realized at the time that the removal of the requirement of an intermediate focus and slit implied that the optical design could be significantly simplified and many of the technological challenges that hampered the full success of the original MaGIXS concept would no longer be applicable. We propose to rebuild the instrument with the simplified design and launch the MaGIXS-2 payload in April 2023. The new design can re-use the telescope mirror, grating, and several mechanical and electrical components from Flight 1. The MaGIXS-2 mission will address one of the fundamental problems of coronal physics: the nature of coronal heating. With its powerful set of plasma diagnostics, MaGIXS-2 will probe the high temperature coronal plasma and make four unique measurements to provide insight into this problem. For the last 20 years, solar astrophysics has imaged and measured solar plasma with extreme ultraviolet or ultraviolet instrumentation while taking broadband X-ray images with limited spectral information for measuring the temperature, density, or element fractionation for the various structures and events in the corona. As there has been essentially no SXR imaging spectroscopy of the solar corona since the Orbiting Solar Observatory days, there is a massive well of untapped potential for future discovery. The first flight of MaGIXS, occurring after a decade of technology and instrument development, demonstrated a revolutionary concept for grazing incidence imaging spectroscopy. The second flight will solidify and strengthen the technological investments put into the MaGIXS mission, will carry out a compelling scientific investigation, and will provide a full proof of concept for an X-ray Imaging Spectrograph that is planning to be proposed for a future satellite mission.

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