GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2: GRB observations with CubeSats after 3 years of operations
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Proceedings of SPIE : Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024 : Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, PT 1 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | MÜNZ, Filip; Jakub ŘÍPA; Andras PAK; Marianna DAFČÍKOVÁ; Norbert WERNER; Masanori OHNO; Laszlo MESZAROS; Vladimir DANIEL; Peter HANAK; Jan HUDEC; Marcel FRAJT; Jakub KAPUS; Petr SVOBODA; Juraj DUDAS; Miroslav KASAL; Tomáš VÍTEK; Martin KOLÁŘ; Lea SZAKSZONOVÁ; Pavol LIPOVSKY; Michaela ĎURÍŠKOVÁ; Ivo VERTAT; Martin SABOL; Milan JUNAS; Maros ROMAN; Pavel KOSÍK; Zsolt FREI; Hiromitsu TAKAHASHI; Yasushi FUKAZAWA; Gabor GALGOCZI; Balazs CSAKI; Robert LASZLO; Tsunefumi MIZUNO; Nikola HUSÁRIKOVÁ and Kazuhiro NAKAZAWA. GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2: GRB observations with CubeSats after 3 years of operations. In Jan-Willem A. den Herder, Shouleh Nikzad, Kazuhiro Nakazawa. Proceedings of SPIE : Space Telescopes and Instrumentation 2024 : Ultraviolet to Gamma Ray, PT 1. Vol. 13093. Washington: SPIE, 2024, p. 1-8. ISBN 978-1-5106-7509-4. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.3025855. |
| web | https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/conference-proceedings-of-spie/13093/3025855/GRBAlpha-and-VZLUSAT-2--GRB-observations-with-CubeSats-after/10.1117/12.3025855.short |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.3025855 |
| Keywords | gamma rays; CubeSat; SiPM; gamma-ray burst; high-energy astrophysics; transient detection; satellite constellation |
| Description | GRBAlpha is a 1U CubeSat launched in March 2021 to a sun-synchronous LEO at an altitude of 550 km to perform an in-orbit demonstration of a novel gamma-ray burst detector developed for CubeSats. VZLUSAT-2 followed ten months later in a similar orbit carrying as a secondary payload a pair of identical detectors as used on the first mission. These instruments detecting gamma-rays in the range of 30-900 keV consist of a 56 cm2 5 mm thin CsI(Tl) scintillator read-out by a row of multi-pixel photon counters (MPPC or SiPM). The scientific motivation is to detect gamma-ray bursts and other HE transient events and serve as a pathfinder for a larger constellation of nanosatellites that could localize these events via triangulation. At the beginning of July 2024, GRBAlpha detected 140 such transients, while VZLUSAT-2 had 83 positive detections, confirmed by larger GRB missions. Almost a hundred of them are identified as gamma-ray bursts, including extremely bright GRB 221009A and GRB 230307A, detected by both satellites. We were able to characterize the degradation of SiPMs in polar orbit and optimize the duty cycle of the detector system also by using SatNOGS radio network for downlink. |
| Related projects: |