Previous | Session 24 | Next | Author Index | Block Schedule
R.P. Johnson (U.C. Santa Cruz), GLAST LAT Collaboration
The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, GLAST, is an orbital mission under construction to measure the cosmic gamma-ray flux in the energy range 20 MeV to about 300 GeV, with supporting measurements for gamma-ray bursts from 10 keV to 25 MeV. The high-energy gamma rays are detected by conversion into pairs by tungsten foils integrated into a 36-layer solid-state tracking detector. The GLAST Tracker-Converter is composed of 16 identical modules, with an unprecedented total of over 80 square meters of silicon-strip detectors and 884,736 readout channels, operating on only 160 W of power. The detectors and electronics in each module are supported on a precision carbon-composite structure, and the electronics system can detect and measure cosmic rays and gamma-ray conversions with high efficiency at trigger rates exceeding 10 kHz. The last Tracker-Converter module was completed and integrated into the instrument in October 2005. This presentation will summarize the design and performance of this important GLAST detector system. This work was funded in part by the DOE and NASA in the U.S. and by INFN and ASI in Italy.
Previous | Session 24 | Next
Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.