Space Missions carrying DayStar Hardware

For decades, researchers and have come to trust the DayStar Filters’ name for an industry standard in space flown narrow bandpass filters.

DayStar Filters is proud to have participated in a number of scientific investigations that have travelled beyond our planet. Working in close cooperation with mission teams, we delivered filters that performed to specifications, enabling mission success.

The DayStar solid state Fabry Perot Etalon crystal design is structurally robust and mechanically dependable, offering consistant tuning and on band performance
. Minimal considerations are required for adaptation to space-borne missions.

References: 1, 2, 3, 4

The Normal Incidence X-Ray Telescope (NIXT) telescope incorporated a Hydrogen Alpha guide telescope that allowed real time pointing and control of the main X-ray telescope during the mission. Using an off-the-shelf ATM filter housing allowed costs to be kept to an absolute minimum with no sacrifice in performance. The mission gathered important scientific data and space-qualified the normal incidence technique later used by the SOHO, TRACE, and STEREO missions.

References: 1, 2, 3.

The NIXT H-alpha camera design was used in the Tunable XUV Imager (TXI), for real time pointing control of the main extreme ultraviolet telescope. Using a 713mm EFL telephoto lens and Sony video camera resulted in a compact and simple instrument. Unfortunately, upon return of the 2001 flight the parachute failed to deploy, preventing any further flights. The DayStar filter, whose core element is a mineral crystal, was unharmed and could have flown again.

References: 1, 2, 3.

A standard DayStar Filters Quantum filter was initially produced for the project and used in planning stages and construction of the optical instrumentation package.

After optical qualification and fitting, the standard Quantum filter optics were moved to a space flight qualified housing.  This would allow the housing to maintain temperature of the optical assembly throughout the ~900 second mission.

The ruggedized housing was designed to withstand liftoff vibration conditions; vacuum conditions and exposure to cosmic radiation present outside of Earth’s protective atmosphere. NASA provided test services for qualification of liftoff vibration conditions and vacuum chamber operations.

Hydrogen Alpha wavelength observations were not the primary focus of the investigations conducted by the Hi C, High Resolution Coronal Imager, but rather as an additional data reference.

“We will start acquiring data at 69 seconds after launch, at a rate of roughly an image a second,” says Jonathan Cirtain, a solar scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. who is the project scientist for HI-C. “We will be able to look through a secondary H-alpha telescope on the instrument in real time and re-point the main telescope as needed.”

After the sucessful launch and mission of the
Hi C High Resolution Coronal Imaging mission, the capsule returned to earth and was recovered with optical instrumentation intact.