GRBAlpha: a 1U CubeSat mission for validating timing-based gamma-ray burst localization

• Authors: PÁL András; OHNO Masanori; MÉSZÁROS László; WERNER Norbert; ŘÍPA Jakub; FRAJT Marcel; HIRADE Naoyoshi; HUDEC Ján; KAPUŠ Jakub; KOLEDA Martin; LASZLO Robert; LIPOVSKÝ Pavol; MATAKE Hiroto; ŠMELKO Miroslav; UCHIDA Nagomi; CSÁK Balázs; ENOTO Teruaki; FREI Zsolt; FUKAZAWA Yasushi; GALGÓCZI Gábor; HIROSE Kengo; HISADOMIHI Syohei; ICHINOHE Yuto; KISS László L.; MIZUNO Tsunefumi; NAKAZAWA Kazuhiro; ODAKA Hirokazu; TAKAHASHI Hiromitsu; TORIGOE Kento
• Year of publication: 2020
• Type: Article in Proceedings
• Conference: Proc. SPIE 11444, Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2020: Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, 114444V
• MU Faculty or unit: Faculty of Science

Web

• https://arxiv.org/pdf/2012.01298.pdf
• https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2561351

• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.2561351
• Keywords: nano-satellite; gamma-ray bursts; scintillators; multi-pixel photon counter
• Description: GRBAlpha is a 1U CubeSat mission with an expected launch date in the first half of 2021. It carries a 75 × 75 × 5 mm CsI(Tl) scintillator, read out by a dual-channel multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) setup, to detect gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). The GRB detector is an in-orbit demonstration for the detector system on the Cubesats Applied for MEasuring and LOcalising Transients (CAMELOT) mission. While GRBAlpha provides 1/8th of the expected effective area of CAMELOT, the comparison of the observed light curves with other existing GRB monitoring satellites will allow us to validate the core idea of CAMELOT, i.e. the feasibility of timing-based localization.

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