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Register a new userOn-ground calibrations of the GRID-02 gamma-ray detector
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The Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) are a space project to monitor the transient gamma-ray sky in the multi-messenger astronomy era using multiple detectors on-board CubeSats. The second GRID detector, GRID-02, was launched in 2020. The performance of the detector, including the energy response, effective area, angular response, and temperature-bias dependence, is calibrated in the laboratory and presented here. These measurements are compared with particle tracing simulations and validate the Geant4 model that will be used for generating detector responses.
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As the amount of information to be transmitted from deep-space rapidly increases, the radiofrequency technology has become a bottleneck in space communications. RF is already limiting the scientific outcome of deep-space missions and could be a significant obstacle in the developing of manned missions. Lasercom holds the promise to solve this problem, as it will considerably increase the data rate while decreasing the energy, mass and volume of onboard communication systems. In RF deep-space communications, where the received power is the main limitation, the traditional approach to boost the data throughput has been increasing the receivers aperture, e.g. the 70-m antennas in the NASAs Deep Space Network. Optical communications also can benefit from this strategy, thus 10-m class telescopes have typically been suggested to support future deep-space links. However, the cost of big telescopes increase exponentially with their aperture, and new ideas are needed to optimize this ratio. Here, the use of ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, known as Cherenkov telescopes, is suggested. These are optical telescopes designed to maximize the receivers aperture at a minimum cost with some relaxed requirements. As they are used in an array configuration and multiple identical units need to be built, each element of the telescope is designed to minimize its cost. Furthermore, the native array configuration would facilitate the joint operation of Cherenkov and lasercom telescopes. These telescopes offer very big apertures, ranging from several meters to almost 30 meters, which could greatly improve the performance of optical ground stations. The key elements of these telescopes have been studied applied to lasercom, reaching the conclusion that it could be an interesting strategy to include them in the future development of an optical deep-space network.
The Soft Gamma-ray Detector (SGD) is one of the instrument payloads onboard ASTRO-H, and will cover a wide energy band (60--600 keV) at a background level 10 times better than instruments currently in orbit. The SGD achieves low background by combining a Compton camera scheme with a narrow field-of-view active shield. The Compton camera in the SGD is realized as a hybrid semiconductor detector system which consists of silicon and cadmium telluride (CdTe) sensors. The design of the SGD Compton camera has been finalized and the final prototype, which has the same configuration as the flight model, has been fabricated for performance evaluation. The Compton camera has overall dimensions of 12 cm x 12 cm x 12 cm, consisting of 32 layers of Si pixel sensors and 8 layers of CdTe pixel sensors surrounded by 2 layers of CdTe pixel sensors. The detection efficiency of the Compton camera reaches about 15% and 3% for 100 keV and 511 keV gamma rays, respectively. The pixel pitch of the Si and CdTe sensors is 3.2 mm, and the signals from all 13312 pixels are processed by 208 ASICs developed for the SGD. Good energy resolution is afforded by semiconductor sensors and low noise ASICs, and the obtained energy resolutions with the prototype Si and CdTe pixel sensors are 1.0--2.0 keV (FWHM) at 60 keV and 1.6--2.5 keV (FWHM) at 122 keV, respectively. This results in good background rejection capability due to better constraints on Compton kinematics. Compton camera energy resolutions achieved with the final prototype are 6.3 keV (FWHM) at 356 keV and 10.5 keV (FWHM) at 662 keV, respectively, which satisfy the instrument requirements for the SGD Compton camera (better than 2%). Moreover, a low intrinsic background has been confirmed by the background measurement with the final prototype.
The Gravitational wave high-energy Electromagnetic Counterpart All-sky Monitor (GECAM) project is the planned Chinese space telescope for detecting the X and gamma-ray counterpart. It consists of two micro-satellites in low earth orbit with the advantages of instantaneous full-sky coverage, low energy threshold down to 6 keV and can be achieved within a short period and small budget. Due to the limitation of size, weight and power consumption of micro-satellites, silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are used to replace the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to assemble a novel gamma-ray detector. A prototype of a SiPM array with LaBr3 crystal is built and tested, and it shows a high detection efficiency (70% at 5.9 keV) and an acceptable uniformity. The low-energy X-ray of 5.9 keV can be detected by a simply readout circuit, and the energy resolution is 6.5% (FWHM) at 662 keV. The design and performance of the detector are discussed in detail in this paper.
Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) mission is a student project designed to use multiple gamma-ray detectors carried by nanosatellites (CubeSats), forming a full-time all-sky gamma-ray detection network that monitors the transient gamma-ray sky in the multi-messenger astronomy era. A compact CubeSat gamma-ray detector, including its hardware and firmware, was designed and implemented for the mission. The detector employs four Gd2Al2Ga3O12 : Ce (GAGG:Ce) scintillators coupled with four silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays to achieve a high gamma-ray detection efficiency between 10 keV and 2 MeV with low power and small dimensions. The first detector designed by the undergraduate student team onboard a commercial CubeSat was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit on October 29, 2018. The detector was in a normal observation state and accumulated data for approximately one month after on-orbit functional and performance tests, which were conducted in 2019.
With the observation of the gravitational wave event of August 17th 2017 the multi-messenger astronomy era has definitely begun. With the opening of this new panorama, it is necessary to have new instruments and a perfect coordination of the existing observatories. Crystal Eye is a detector aimed at the exploration of the electromagnetic counterpart of the gravitational waves. Such events generated by neutron stars mergers are associated with gamma-ray bursts (GRB). At present, there are few instruments in orbit able to detect photons in the energy range going from tens of keV up to few MeV. These instruments belong to two different old observation concepts: the all sky monitors (ASM) and the telescopes. The detector we propose is a crossover technology, the Crystal Eye: a wide field of view observatory in the energy range from 10 keV to 10 MeV with a pixelated structure. A pathfinder will be launched with Space RIDER in 2022. We here present the preliminary results of the characterization of the first pixel.
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