The Rockets for Extended-source X-ray Spectroscopy (tREXS) are a series of suborbital rocket payloads being developed at The Pennsylvania State University. The tREXS science instrument is a soft X-ray grating spectrometer that will provide a large field-of-view and unmatched spectral resolving power for extended sources. Each instrument channel consists of a passive, mechanical focusing optic and an array of reflection gratings. The focal plane consists of an array of CIS113 CMOS sensors. tREXS I is currently in the design phase and is being developed for a launch in 2021 to observe diffuse soft X-ray emission from the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. An analysis of instrument optics, gratings, and focal plane camera is discussed.

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Drew M. Miles, Randall M. McEntaffer, James H. Tutt, Tyler Anderson, Matthew Weiss, Logan Baker, Joseph Weston, Bridget O'Meara, Ross C. McCurdy, Bailey Myers, and Fabien Grisé, "An introduction to the Rockets for Extended-source X-ray Spectroscopy," Proc. SPIE 11118, UV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Space Instrumentation for Astronomy XXI, 111180B (Presented at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications: August 11, 2019; Published: 9 September 2019); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2529567.