The X-Ray Sensor (XRS) has been making full-disk observations of the solar soft X-ray irradiance onboard National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) since 1975. XRS provides critical information about the solar activity for space weather operations, and the standard X-ray classification of solar flares is based on its measurements. The GOES-R series of XRS sensors, with the first in the series launched in November 2016, has a completely different instrument design compared to its predecessors, GOES-1 through GOES-15. To provide continuity, the two GOES-R XRS spectral bands remain unchanged providing the solar X-ray irradiance in the 0.05-0.4 nm and 0.1-0.8 nm bands. The changes include using Si photodiodes instead of ionization cells to improve performance, using multiple channels to allow for a wider dynamic range, including quadrant photodiodes for real-time flare location measurements, and providing accurate radiometric calibrations using the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The design and pre-flight calibration results for this next-generation XRS instrument are presented here in this XRS Paper-1, and in-flight solar X-ray measurements from GOES-16, GOES-17, and GOES-18 are provided in the XRS Paper-2.
