Speaker
Description
The CREAM experiment was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station (ISS) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on August 14, 2017. The instrument was successfully installed and activated on the ISS Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility as an attached payload on August 22, 2017. The CREAM instrument was initially developed to measure cosmic ray elemental spectra using a series of ultra-long-duration balloon flights. The balloon-borne CREAM experiment was flown seven times (12/15/04 - 12/28/16) over Antarctica accumulating ~191 days of flight time, the longest known exposure for a single balloon project. Building on the success of the balloon flights, the payload was transformed for accommodation on the ISS. This version of CREAM, aka ISS-CREAM, is configured with redundant and complementary particle detectors capable of precise measurements of elemental spectra for Z = 1 - 26 nuclei, as well as electrons. The four layers of its finely segmented Silicon Charge Detector provide precise charge measurements, and its ionization calorimeter provides energy measurements. In addition, scintillator-based Top and Bottom Counting Detectors and Boronated Scintillator Detector distinguish electrons from nuclei. At least an order of magnitude increase in data collecting power is expected by utilizing the ISS to reach the highest energies practical with direct measurements. On-orbit performance of the instrument and preliminary results from the ongoing analysis will be presented.
