Speaker
Description
The Cosmic Ray Energetics And Mass experiment for the International Space Station, ISS-CREAM, aims to study the origin, acceleration and propagation mechanisms of high-energy cosmic rays. The ISS-CREAM detector was launched in August 2017 to the ISS aboard the SpaceX-12 Dragon spacecraft. The Top Counting Detector (TCD) and Bottom Counting Detector (BCD) are parts of the ISS-CREAM instrument and they are designed for electron and gamma-ray physics. The TCD/BCD can distinguish electrons from protons using differences in shape between electromagnetic and hadronic showers. In addition, the TCD/BCD can provide a complementary trigger to that from the calorimeter and a low energy trigger to the ISS-CREAM instrument. For these purposes, the TCD/BCD are designed as 2-dimensional detectors, which consist of a plastic scintillator attached to 20 x 20 photodiodes. The sizes of the TCD and BCD detectors are 500 mm × 500 mm × 5 mm and 600 mm × 600 mm × 10 mm, respectively. The ISS-CREAM experiment has many critical requirements for space launch qualification. Thus the mechanical safety and performance in response to vibration and thermal vacuum tests have been studied under various conditions prior to launch. In this presentation, we report the design and construction of the TCD/BCD and the performance of the detector before and after launch.
