Astroparticle Physics Missions & Programs
Current
Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) is a highly sensitive, large field-of-view instrument designed to provide critical Gamma
Ray Burst triggers and 4-arcmin positions. It is a coded aperture imaging instrument with a 1.4 steradian field-of-view (half
coded). The energy range is 15-150 keV for imaging with a non-coded response up to 500 keV. Within several seconds of detecting a
burst, the BAT will calculate an initial position, decide whether the burst merits a spacecraft slew and, if so, send the position
to the spacecraft. The BAT is one of 3 instruments on board the Swift satellite, launched
in November 2004. The Swift PI is Neil Gehrels. The BAT lead is Scott Barthelmy. EUD Co-Is are Lorella Angelini, Louis Barbier,
Scott Barthelmy, Tom Cline, Robin Corbet, Neil Gehrels, Frank Marshall, Richard Mushotzky, Jay Norris, Ann Parsons, Jack Tueller,
Nick White, and Will Zhang. The Swift Science Support Center is in the EUD and the data
are archived in the HEASARC.
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 The Astroparticle Physics Lab and the
X-ray Astrophysics Lab have collaborated on InFOCUS, a balloon-borne instrument
incorporating recent breakthroughs in focusing optics and detectors to achieve order of magnitude improvements in both hard x-ray
sensitivity and imaging resolution, with high resolution spectroscopy. This instrument will pioneer the extension into the hard
x-ray energy range of the power of focusing optics that has revolutionized x-ray astronomy with missions like ROSAT and ASCA.
InFOCuS has flown successfully in 2001 and 2004. The InFOCuS PI is Jack Tueller. Co-I's include EUD's L. Barbier, S. D. Barthelmy,
N. Gehrels, H. Krimm, A. Parsons, B. Teegarden, K.-W. Chan, R. Petre, P. Serlemitsos, Y. Soong, and N. White.
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Other current missions/programs include:
ACE,
BESS,
CAPRICE,
DDF,
EPACT,
GCN (Gamma-ray burst Coordinates Network),
IMAX,
INTEGRAL,
NIGHTGLOW,
OWL,
PAMELA,
POEMS, and
WIND: TGRS
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Future
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is a major observatory
under construction to measure the cosmic gamma-ray flux over the energy
range 20 MeV - >300 GeV, with supporting measurements for gamma-ray bursts
down to ~10 keV. With its large leap in key capabilities, GLAST will open a
new and important window on a wide variety of high energy phenomena,
including black holes and active galactic nuclei; gamma-ray bursts;
supernova remnants and the origin of cosmic rays; and searches for
hypothetical new phenomena such as supersymmetric dark matter annihilations,
violations of Lorentz invariance, and exotic relics from the Big Bang. GLAST is scheduled for launch in 2007. Steve Ritz
is the Project Scientist; Neil Gehrels
is a Deputy Project Scientist; and Julie McEnery is a Mission Scientist.
Data and analysis tools will be released to the science community through
the GLAST Science Support Center, located at Goddard and led by Jay Norris;
the primary liason with the community is David Band. Other GSSC scientists
are Jerry Bonnell, Robin Corbet, Dave Davis, Masa Hirayama, and Dirk Petry.
Theorists Floyd Stecker and Alice Harding are also part of the GLAST Mission
team.
The Anti-Coincidence Detector (ACD) for the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on GLAST is being developed in the EUD.
Bob Hartman and Jay Norris are ACD Scientists, Alex Moiseev is the ACD Instrument Lead Scientist and Dave Thompson is the
ACD Subsystem Manager and LAT multiwavelength coordinator. Steve Ritz is the LAT Instrument Scientist.
Other future missions/programs include:
ACCESS,
the
Beyond Einstein program,
Constellation-X,
EXIST,
LISA (see the AstroGravS archive), and
STEREO (IMPACT instrument)
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Past
CGRO/BATSE,
CGRO/EGRET,
GRIS, and
ISOMAX.
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