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Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT)

The Broad Band X-Ray Telescope (BBXRT) flew aboard ill fated Space Shuttle COLUMBIA for a nine day period in December 1990. It was one of four telescopes comprising the Astro-1 mission payload aboard STS-35. The other telescopes are displayed at the National Air & Space Museum on the National Mall or the Udvar Hazy in Virginia along with being on loan to museums nationwide.

BBXRT is a museum grade flown artifact that is one of a kind. It will continually elevate in value when the Space Shuttle Program formally closes in 2011. The last space shuttle mission has already flown this year. No others will be launched from this date forward according to NASA.

Flown artifacts from the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, once closed, have greatly elevated in value and continue to do so. BBXRT shall be no exception.

The Broad Band X-Ray telescope is a world class museum grade flown artifact. It is the largest mission artifact ever flown aboard a Space Shuttle and returned to earth.

Description

The Broad Band X-ray Telescope (BBXRT) was the first focusing X-ray telescope to operate over a broad energy range (0.3-12 keV) with moderate energy resolution. BBXRT was added to the Astro-1 mission, to take advantage of the unique opportunity provided by the bright supernova called SN1987A. The energy resolution (90 eV and 150 eV at 1 and 6 keV, respectively), coupled with an extremely low detector background, made BBXRT a very powerful tool for the study of continuum and line emission from cosmic sources. The observing program was designed to be an even mix of Galactic and extragalactic targets. It was not flown again on the Astro-2 mission.

The BBXRT consists of a pair of coaligned thin foil conical X-ray mirrors, with a cryogenically-cooled, Si(Li) spectrometer at the focus of each. The X-ray mirrors have a focal length of 3.8 m and a diameter of 40 cm. Each mirror consists of 118 nested pairs of reflectors. Each reflector consists of 0.017 mm thick aluminum shaped into a cone, coated with an acrylic lacquer to form a microscopically smooth surface, which is overcoated with gold to enhance X-ray reflectivity. The spatial resolution of the telescope is 1.3 arcmin (half power radius) and the plate scale is 0.91 arcmin per cm. The detectors are segmented into five discrete Si(Li) detection elements, each with 512 energy channels. The circular central element has a diameter (field of view) of 4.0 arc minutes. The outer ring extends the field of view to 17 arcminutes, and is divided into four 90 degree segments. Each is located in a cryogenically-cooled vacuum cryostat. Attached to each cryostat is a solid argon cooler with a 90 lb capacity.

For more information you can go to :

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/bbxrt/bbxrt_about.html

Be the second owner of the Broad Band X-Ray Telescope.