FIRE: Far-ultraviolet Imaging Rocket Experiment, a Sounding Rocket Telescope

FIRE (Far-ultraviolet Imaging Rocket Experiment) is a sounding rocket payload telescope designed to image between 900-1100 angstrom. It is scheduled to launch on January 29(th), 2011 from the Poker Flats complex in northern Alaska. For its first flight, it will target G191B2B, a white dwarf calibration source, and M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy), the science target, to help determine the number of hot, young O stars, as well as the intervening dust attenuation. FIRE primary consists of a single primary mirror coated in silicon carbide, a 2000 angstrom thick indium filter and a micro-channel plate detector coated with rubidium bromide. Combined, these create a passband of 900-1100 angstrom for the system and reject the hydrogen Lyman-alpha to approximately a factor of 10(-4). To ensure that the filter survives the launch, a small vacuum chamber has been built around it to keep the pressure at 10(-8) torr or lower.