Abstract Soft X‐ray emission occurs within planetary magnetosheaths when highly charged solar wind ions undergo charge exchange with neutrals. The emission can provide dynamic views of the magnetosheath and cusps, allowing for investigations of the solar wind interaction with a planetary magnetosphere. The SMILE and LEXI missions will use soft X‐ray imagers (SXIs) to explore the terrestrial magnetosheath. We explore the viability of a similar study at Uranus, where icy moons and the exosphere source neutrals. The neutrals undergo charge exchange with highly charged solar wind ions in the magnetosheath, causing soft X‐ray emission. Here we present a simplified description of Uranus's magnetosheath to estimate emission rates. We estimate emission on the order of photon , corresponding to integration times for a SMILE‐like SXI under 0.1 hr at 212 . Emission rates are higher at equinox than solstice. Emission rates are fairly constant for different solar wind conditions tested, apart from a low density sample where the emission is one order of magnitude lower. Testing the LEXI‐like SXI under slow wind conditions gives integration times approximately double that of SMILE, minutes at 628 . Improving the FOV and effective area of the SMILE SXI to test what a “future SXI” may look like reduces integration times to be s at 100 . Under a point source approximation, all SXIs perform well to au, with integration times remaining below 17 hr. Overall, this study supports further investigation of X‐ray instrumentation possibilities for the Uranus flagship mission.
Naylor et al. (Sat,) studied this question.