The Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) is a new international space observatory in NASA’s Small Explorer program, designed in a collaboration between the Italian Space Agency and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and built by Ball Aerospace. IXPE has an expected launch in November 2021, to a 600-km altitude equatorial orbit. IXPE is an astrophysics mission using three telescope assemblies to measure the polarization of cosmic X-rays. Each assembly is composed of a mirror module assembly (MMA) with 24 nested nickel-cobalt cylindrical shells and a unique, polarization-sensitive, gas pixel detector (GPD) within the detector unit (DU). As a NASA mission, IXPE must adhere to the orbital debris mitigation requirements specified in NASA Standard 8719.14 [1]; in the present work, we will only discuss reentry human casualty risk. As initially designed, the IXPE observatory exceeded NASA’s casualty risk threshold. IXPE does not include a propulsion system to perform a controlled reentry at the end of mission to mitigate the ground casualty risk. To reduce the risk from the uncontrolled reentry of this observatory, the IXPE design team worked with the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office to reduce the debris casualty area through design-for-demise and containment methods. The flight design of IXPE is now compliant with the ground casualty risk requirement at a casualty probability of 1:13,100 compared to a casualty requirement of better than 1:10,000.


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    Title :

    Design for Minimum Casualty Area – The IXPE Case


    Contributors:
    C. Ostrom (author) / J. Marichalar (author) / B. Greene (author) / W. Deininger (author) / A. Walden (author) / J. Bacon (author) / C. Sanchez (author)

    Publication date :

    2021


    Size :

    7 pages


    Type of media :

    Report


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English




    Design for Minimum Casualty Area – The IXPE Case

    C Ostrom / J Marichalar / B Greene et al. | NTRS


    IXPE Mirror Module Assemblies

    B. Ramsey | NTIS | 2019


    IXPE Mirror Module Assemblies

    Ramsey, Brian D. / Bongiorno, Stephen D. / Kolodziejczak, Jeffery J. et al. | NTRS | 2019