SATech 01 (Kongjian Xinjishu Shiyan 01)

SATech 01 [CAS]

SATech 01 or Kongjian Xinjishu Shiyan 01 is a Chinese technology demonstration satellite.

The satellite carries the Lobster Eye Imager for Astronomy (LEIA), a pathfinder of the Wide-field X-ray Telescope of the Einstein Probe (EP) mission.

State-of-the-art Micro-Pore Optics (MPO) allows the X-ray imager to have a large field-of-view of 346 square degrees (18.6° × 18.6°). Four large-format complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors, each measuring 6 cm × 6 cm, are used as the focal plane detectors, and an optical assembly made up of 36 MPO chips is used to focus incident X-ray photons. The instrument has an effective area of 2 to 3 cm² at 1 keV in essentially all directions within the field of view and an angular resolution of 4 to 8 arcmin for the point spread function's central focal spot. The detection passband in soft X-rays is 0.5 - 4 keV, and at 1,000 second observations, the sensitivity is 2 - 3 × 10^-11 erg s^-1 cm^-2.

LEIA weighs 56 kg overall and has an 85 W power output. The satellite has a 2 year design life and travels in a 500 km Sun-synchronous orbit with a 95 minute orbital period.

By validating in flight the technologies of both novel focusing imaging optics and CMOS sensors for X-ray observation, as well as by optimizing the working setups of the instrumental parameters, LEIA is laying the groundwork for future missions. Even with the limited amount of useful observing time available, LEIA is able to conduct scientific observations to discover new transients and to monitor known sources in the soft X-ray band.

The satellite was launched in July 2022 on the maiden flight of the Lijian-1 rocket from Jiuquan.