A Lunar-based Soft X-ray Imager (LSXI) for the Earth’s magnetosphere

We propose to use the Moon as a platform to obtain a global view of Earth’s magnetosphere by a Lunar-based Soft X-ray Imager (LSXI). LSXI is a wide field-of-view Soft X-ray telescope, which can obtain X-ray images of Earth’s magnetosphere based on the solar wind charge exchange (SWCX) X-ray emission. Global perspective is crucial to understand the overall interaction of the solar wind with magnetosphere. LSXI is capable of continuously monitoring the evolution of geospace conditions under the impact of the solar wind by simultaneous observation of the bow shock, magnetosheath, magnetopause and cusps for the first time. This proposal is answering the call for the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program Phase IV.