Engineering topics

Adams, J. H.

Publications and source records attributed to Adams, J. H..

45 records · Page 3

NASA NTRS2001

Performance of the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC)

The ATIC instrument is a balloon-borne experiment capable of measuring cosmic ray elemental spectra from 50 GeV to 100 TeV for nuclei from H to Fe with a fully active Bismuth Germanate calorimeter. Several Long Duration Balloon flights from McMurdo station, Antarctica are scheduled. The detector was tested with high energy electron, proton, and pion beams at CERN. We present results for 150 and 375 GeV protons, and 150 GeV pions and comparison with a GEANT Monte Carlo.

Case, G.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Composite Materials for Radiation Shielding During Deep Space Missions

Minimizing radiation exposure from the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) environment during deep space missions is essential to human health and sensitive instrument survivability. Given the fabrication constraints of space transportation vehicles protective shielding is, consequently, a complicated materials issue. These concerns are presented and considered in view of some novel composite materials being developed/suggested for GCR shielding applications. Advantages and disadvantages of the composites will be discussed as well as the need for coordinated testing/evaluation and modeling efforts.

Grugel, R. N.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Preliminary Results from the First Flight of ATIC: Z>8 Spectra

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) is designed to measure individual spectra from protons to Fe for energies from 10 GeV to near 100 Tev. Preliminary results will be presented 8 less than Z less than or equal to 26 spectra from the maiden flight of ATIC in Antarctica that acquired 360 hours of data.

Adams, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS2001

The ATIC Experiment: Performance of the Scintillator Hodoscopes and the BGO Calorimeter

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) Balloon Experiment had its first flight from Mcmurdo, Antarctica 28/12/2000 to 13/01/2001, local time, recording over 360 hours of data. The design goal of ATIC was to measure the Cosmic Ray composition and energy spectra from approximately 50 GeV to near 100 TeV utilizing a Si-matrix detector, a scintillator hodoscope, carbon targets and a calorimeter consisting of a stack of BGO scintillator crystals. The design, the operations and in-flight performance of the scintillator hodoscope and the BGO calorimeter are described.

Isbert, Joachim↗

NASA NTRS2001

The First Flight of ATIC: Preliminary Results on Li, Be, B Nuclei

The ATIC (Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter) balloon experiment had its first test flight which lasted for 16 days and brought it around Antarctica. The ATIC spectrometer consists of a fully active BGO (Bismuth Germanate) calorimeter, scintillator hodoscopes and a silicon matrix. The silicon matrix consisted of 4480 pixels was used as a charge detector in the experiment. We discuss a possibility of the ATIC to measure individual energy spectra of Li, Be and B.

Zatsepin, V. I.↗

NASA NTRS2001

ECCO: Th/U/Pu/Cm Dating of Galactic Cosmic Ray Nuclei

The ECCO (Extremely-heavy Cosmic-ray Composition Observer) instrument is one of two instruments which comprise the HNX (Heavy Nuclei Explorer) mission. The principal goal of ECCO is to measure the age of galactic cosmic ray nuclei using the actinides (Th, U, Pu, Cm) as clocks. As a bonus, ECCO will search with unprecedented sensitivity for long-lived elements in the superheavy island of stability. ECCO is an enormous array (23 sq. m) of BP-1 glass track-etch detectors, and is based on the successful flight heritage of the Trek detector which was deployed externally on Mir. We present a description of the instrument, estimates of expected performance, and recent calibrations which demonstrate that the actinides can be resolved from each other with good charge resolution.

Westphal, A. J.↗

NASA NTRS2001

The ATIC Experiment: First Balloon Flight

The Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC) Balloon Experiment had its maiden test flight from McMurdo, Antarctica 28/12/00 to 13/01/01, local time, recording over 360 hours of data. ATIC was designed to measure the composition and energy spectra of cosmic rays from approx. 10 GeV to near 100 TeV utilizing a Si matrix detector to determine charge in conjunction with a scintillator hodoscope which measures charge and trajectory. Cosmic rays that interact in a carbon target have their energy determined from the shower that develops within a fully active calorimeter composed of a stack of scintillating BGO (Bismuth Germanate) crystals. ATIC's geometry factor is about 0.25 sq. m -sr. During line-of-sight operations much of the datastream was transmitted to the ground. For most of the flight, the data was recorded on-board, yielding 45 GB of flight data for analysis. The payload construction, operations and in-flight performance are described, along with preliminary results from the on-going analysis.

Wefel, J. P.↗

NASA NTRS2001

The Heavy Nuclei eXplorer (HNX) Mission

The primary scientific objectives of HNX, which was recently selected by NASA for a Small Explorer (SMEX) Mission Concept Study, are to measure the age of the galactic cosmic rays (GCR) since nucleosynthesis, determine the injection mechanism for the GCR accelerator (Volatility or FIP), and study the mix of nucleosynthetic processes that contribute to the source of GCRs. The experimental goal of HNX is to measure the elemental abundances of all individual stable nuclei from neon through the actinides and possibly beyond. HNX is composed of two instruments: ECCO, which measures elemental abundances of nuclei with Z greater than or equal to 72, and ENTICE. which measures elemental abundances of nuclei with Z between 10 and 82. We describe the mission and the science that can be addressed by HNX.

Binns, W. R.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Charge composition of cosmic rays between 4 and 100 GV

Balloon-flight measurements were used to determine ratios of cosmic-ray L nuclei (charge Z ranging from 3 to 5) to M nuclei (Z ranging from 6 to 8) and of VH nuclei (Z from 20 to 27) to M nuclei using a magnetic spectrometer. The purpose of the measurements was to establish whether both ratios vary with rigidity as this would provide evidence for more than one basic acceleration mechanism. The results provide no indication that the VH spectrum is steeper than the M spectrum.

Golden, R. L.↗