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ACTIVE MISSIONS
   AstroSat    BurstCube
   CALET    Chandra
   Fermi    HXMT-Insight
   INTEGRAL    IXPE
   MAXI    NICER
   NuSTAR    SRG  eROSITA
   /ART-XC
   Swift    XMM-Newton
   XRISM    
PAST MISSIONS
   AGILE    ANS
   ARIEL V    ASCA
   BBXRT    BeppoSAX
   CGRO    COPERNICUS
   COS-B    DXS
   EINSTEIN    EUVE
   EXOSAT    GINGA
   GRANAT    HaloSat
   HAKUCHO    HEAO-1
   HEAO-3    HETE-2
   Hitomi    OSO-7
   OSO-8    ROSAT
   Rossi XTE    SAS-2
   SAS-3    Suzaku
   TENMA    UHURU
   VELA 5B     WASS
   XQC    

MAXI

MAXI in the clean room with all final covers installed

The Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) is the first experiment to be installed on the Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility (JEM-EF or Kibo-EF) on the International Space Station (ISS), and the first high energy astrophysical experiment placed on the space station. MAXI was launched with the Kibo Exposed Facility on the space shuttle Endeavour (STS-127) on July 15, 2009 and delivered to the ISS. MAXI started observations in August 2009 and was originally intended for a two year operations period, but they were extended and approved through March 2021.

Mission Characteristics

* Lifetime : August 2009–present
* Energy Range : 0.5–30 keV
* Special Features : all-sky survey over each ISS orbit;
provide rapid detection of transients and variable sources.

* Payload :

  • Gas Slit Cameras (GSC) consist of 12 xeon-filled proportional gas counters sensitive to 2–30 keV energy range.
    Slit collimators give the GSC a 1.5° x 160° wide field of view in each of the horizontal and zenithal directions

  • Solid-state Slit Cameras (SSC) consist of one dimensional position sensitive X-ray detector (CCDs) sensitive to 0.5–12 keV energy range. The collimating slit aperature providing a narrow field of view (1.5° by 80°) in the horizontal (ISS forward motion) and vertical (zenithal) directions.

MAXI includes also a Radiation Belt Monitor to monitor radiation events

* Science Highlights:
  • Monitoring of a variety of variable and transient X-ray sources
  • Rapid locating of burst events such as novae, supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts found initially by other observatories, refining their sky locations more precisely.
  • Discovery of numerous X-ray transient sources including black hole candidates and new soft gamma-ray burst sources.
  • Transient event alerts: alerts to other observatories are distributed within 30 s of detection.
* Archive: The HEASARC hosts event data, and calibration files for MAXI.
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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Thursday, 24-Sep-2020 20:32:09 EDT