@inproceedings{b42600a7549a4abb947897864d5edf2a,
title = "RAAD: A CubeSat-based soft gamma-ray detector for the study of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and other short timescale phenomena",
abstract = "We present RAAD (Rapid Acquisition Atmospheric Detector), a detector designed to study Terrestrial Gamma ray Flashes (TGFs) and other fast hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray phenomena. TGFs are bursts of radiation from thunderstorms which occur on sub-microsecond timescales. Most detectors used to study TGFs have been limited by deadtime and timing precision, and sometimes poor calibration at lower energies. We will present calibration and space qualification tests of a detector aimed at the 20 keV - 2500 keV range with ∼ 100 ns time response and good spectral resolution. This uses 2 X 2 arrays of two different scintillation crystals, Cerium Bromide and Lanthanum BromoChloride, both of which have very fast decay times. We couple them to both standard photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) along with custom electronics designed to provide very fast sampling with very low power consumption per channel. Each crystal array fits into < 1U of a cubesat, and provides ∼20 cm2of effective area to photons < 200 keV and ∼10 cm2 at 600 keV. The RAAD concept is the winner of the Mini-satellite competition held by the UAE Space Agency in 2018, largely developed with undergraduates at NYUAD, and is expected to be fully developed and launched by 2020. Two detectors, one with PMTs and one with SiPMs will be deployed on a 3U CubeSat, providing head to head performance tests for both crystal types and light sensor types. This will serve as a proof of concept showing how such detectors could be deployed in a network of CubeSats to study TGFs and other phenomena.",
keywords = "CubeSat, RAADSat, cerium bromide, gamma-ray, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes",
author = "Roberts, {Mallory S.E.} and Francesco Arneodo and {Di Giovanni}, Adriano and {Al Qasim}, Ahlam and {Al Mannaei}, Aisha and Noora Almarri and Lolowa Alkindi and Fatema Alkhouri and Philip Panicker and Sohmyung Ha and Laura Manenti and Gianmarco Bruno and Rodrigo Torres and Valerio Conicella and Prashanth Marpu and Thu Vu and {Al Blooshi}, Heyam",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi Research Enhancement Fund, the United Arab Emirates Space Agency MiniSat competition, and Khalifa University. Lolowa AlKindi is supported by the NYUAD Kawader program. We are grateful to Sebastien Celestin for providing models of TGF emission used in our simulations. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2019 SPIE.; Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXIII 2019 ; Conference date: 09-09-2019 Through 12-09-2019",
year = "2019",
doi = "10.1117/12.2533447",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering",
publisher = "SPIE",
editor = "Neeck, {Steven P.} and Philippe Martimort and Toshiyoshi Kimura",
booktitle = "Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXIII",
}