Balloon Flight Engineering Model Balloon Flight Results

1. Balloon Flight Engineering Model Balloon Flight Results LAT - Balloon Flight Team GSFC, SLAC, SU, Hiroshima, NRL, UCSC, Pisa (Led by D. Thompson, G. Godfrey, S. Williams) T. Kamae on behalf of the GLAST/LAT Collaboration • CONTENTS • Rationale and Goals • Preparation • Balloon Flight and Operations • Instrument Performance • Results VS. Geant4 • Lessons Learned • Conclusions

2. NASA Announcement of Opportunity:"The LAT proposer must also demonstrate by a balloon flight of a representative model of the flight instrument or by some other effective means the ability of the proposed instrument to reject adequately the harsh background of a realistic space environment. … A software simulation is not deemed adequate for this purpose.” Planning the balloon flight: Identify specific goals that were practical to achieve with limited resources (time, money, and people), using the previously-tested Beam Test Engineering Model (BTEM) as a starting point. Rationale: Why a Balloon Flight? Fig.1: Beam Test Engineering Model (’99) (BTEM), a prototype GLAST/LAT tower. The black box to the right is the anticoincidence detector (ACD), which surrounds the tracker (TKR). The aluminum-covered block in the middle is the calorimeter (CAL). Readout electronics were housed in the crates to the left.

3. Goals of the Balloon Flight • Validate the basic LAT design at the single tower level. • Show the ability to take data in the high isotropic background flux of energetic particles in the balloon environment. • Record all or partial particle incidences in an unbiased way that can be used as a background event data base. • Find an efficient data analysis chain that meets the requirement for the future Instrument Operation Center of GLAST.

4. Preparation:What Was Needed for this Balloon Flight? • A LAT detector, as similar as possible to one tower of the flightinstrument - functionally equivalent.BTEM • Rework on Tower Electronics Module.Stanford U • Rework on Tracker. UCSC • Rework on Calorimeter. NRL • Rework on ACD. GSFC • External Gamma-ray Target (XGT). Hiroshima, SLAC • On-board software.SLAC, SU, NRL • Mechanical structure to support the instrument through launch, flight, and recovery.GSFC, SLAC • Power, commanding, and telemetry.NSBF, SU, SLAC, NRL • Real-time commanding and data displays.SU, SLAC, NRL • Data analysis tools.SLAC, GSFC, UW, Pisa • Modeling of the instrument response.Hiroshima, SLAC, KTH

5. Preparation: BFEM Integration at SLAC

6. Preparation: BFEM Transportation to Goddard

7. Preparation: Pre-shipment Review on July 16, 2001

8. Preparation: Pre-Launch Review Real-time event display. A penetrating cosmic ray is seen in all the detectors. Pre-launch testing at National Scientific Balloon Facility, Palestine, Texas. August, 2001.

9. Balloon Team at Palestine Texas

10. Flight and Operation: Launch on August 4, 2001 First results (real-time data): trigger rate as a function of atmospheric depth. The trigger rate never exceeded 1.5 KHz, well below the BFEM capability of 6 KHz. The balloon reached an altitude of 38 km and gave a float time of three hours.

11. Flight and Operation: Onboard DAQ and Ground Electronics Worked

12. Flight and Operation: Onboard DAQ and Ground Electronics Worked

13. External Targets (4 plastic scint) to test direction determination and measure interaction rate. 4 million L1T in 1 hour level flight and 100k events down linked. Many more in ascending part of flight and in HD. Instrument Performance: All Subsystems Performed Properly ACD (13 scint. tiles) to detect charged particles and heavy ions (Z>=2). Tracker (26 layers of SSD) to measure charged tracks 200um and reconstruct gamma ray direction. CAL (CsI logs) To image EM energy deposition.

14. Instrument Performance: All Subsystems Performed Properly Level-1 Trigger Rate (L1T) Level Flight DataGeant4 (Default Cosmic-RayFluxes) All 500/sec 504/sec “Charged” 444/sec 447/sec “Neutral” 56/sec 57/sec Number of Events Recorded Events through DownlinkEvents in Hard Disk Ascending 30.5k (R53) + 109k (R54) 1.5M (R53+R54) Level Flight 105k (R55)

15. Instrument Performance: ACD Threshold and Efficiency Anti-Coincidence DetectorPulse height distr. for stiff charged particles shows clean separation of the peak from noise. Scinti. Eff. > 99.96% if cracks are filled with scintillator tapes.

16. alpha proton Calorimeter Pulse height distr. for stiff charged particles shows a single-charge peak and a peak due to alpha particles. Alpha particles are seen. Instrument Performance: CAL’s Energy Measurement and Imaging Imaging capability demonstrated

17. Instrument Performance: CPU Reboot and DAQ Livetime

18. Instrument Performance: Dead Time of DAQ as Predicted 68us Will be = 20us in LAT

19. Instrument Performance: Tracker and XGT Association Cosmic ray interaction in 4 External Targets (plastic scintilators) Hadronic shower produced in XGT (416 recorded) Gamma ray produced in XGT (20 identified)

20. Instrument Performance: Mechanical Stability Proven BFEM has experienced ~7g shocks

21. Instrument Performance: Mechanical Stability Proven Landing Launch Recovery

22. Charged parrticle event:The track passes through the ACD (top), the tracker, and the calorimeter. Note: Tracker has no Si strips in the upper right corner Gamma-ray event: Two tracks are seen in the tracker and calorimeter. Pattern recognition of an inverted “V” will allow us to selected gamma-rays from cosmic-ray background. “Difficult” event: Particle and gamma –ray splashes deposit energy in ACD, Tracker, and Calorimeter. Results: Reconstruction of Events

23. Proton spectrum e-/e+ spectra gamma spectrum Results VS Geant4:Simulation of Cosmic Ray Events e-/e+ Gammas prod. by cosmic protons in the atmosphere Primary protons passing into the Earth magnetic field and secondary protons prod. by primary protons in the atmosphere

24. Results VS Geant4: Charged Particles Flux and Angular Distribution Default fluxes and angular distributions: protons, muons, and electrons Data is higher than the model flux! g e-/e+ Geant4 prediction muons protons 90 deg. Cosine of cosmic-ray direction Downward

25. Results VS Geant4: “Charged” Particle Distribution “Charged” particle hit distribution: default fluxes and angular distributions Data is higher than the model flux near the Calorimeter Data Geant4 prediction Calorimeter side Top of Tracker Tracker layer number

26. Results VS Geant4: “Neutral” Particle Distribution “Neutral” particle hit distribution: gammas and under-the-ACD electrons Geant4 prediction Data is higher than the model flux above the Super GLAST layers Data Calorimeter side Top of Tracker Tracker layer number

27. Lessons Learned • Test instrument in the flight environment as much as possible: • Leak in the pressure vessel (Was very expensive for BFEM) • Two (xy) layer sets left out of L1T (Little side-entering muons on ground) • Importance of a well-tune Instrument and CR Simulator: • A strong team assigned for LAT simulation • Simulators for every steps of Integration and Testing • Detection of a small delicate fault in L1T after tuning the Geant4 simulator: • Constant monitoring of the LAT DAQ and filtering process

28. Conclusions • Goals of the balloon flight were achieved. • BFEM successfully collected data using a simple three-in-a-row trigger at a rate that causes • little concern when extrapolated to the full flight unit LAT. • There seems little doubt that gamma-ray data can be extracted from the triggers and that the background can be rejected at an acceptable level. • Through the data analysis, we gained confidence in our ability to simulate the instrument and • the cosmic ray background. • Balloon flight offered a first opportunity for the LAT team to deal with many of the issues • involved in a flight program. • Lessons learned drawn from BFEM experiences will be fed back to the enitre LAT team and • that will make the flight unit development slightly easier.

29. Who Was Involved in this Balloon Flight? • D. J. Thompson, R. C. Hartman, H. Kelly, T. Kotani, J. Krizmanic, A. Moiseev, J. F. Ormes, S. Ritz, R. Schaefer, D. Sheppard, S. Singh, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center • G. Godfrey, E. do Couto e Silva, R. Dubois, B. Giebels, G. Haller, T. Handa, T. Kamae, A. Kavelaars, T. Linder, M. Ozaki1, L. S. Rochester, F. M. Roterman, J. J. Russell, M. Sjogren2, T. Usher, P. Valtersson2, A. P. Waite, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (KTH, ISAS) • S. M. Williams, D. Lauben, P. Michelson, P.L. Nolan, J. Wallace, Stanford University • T. Mizuno, Y. Fukazawa, K. Hirano, H. Mizushima, S. Ogata, Hiroshima University • J. E. Grove, J. Ampe3, W. N. Johnson, M. Lovellette, B. Phlips, D. Wood, Naval Research Laboratory • H. f.-W. Sadrozinski, Stuart Briber4, James Dann5, M. Hirayama, R. P. Johnson, Steve Kliewer6, W. Kroger, Joe Manildi7,G. Paliaga, W. A. Rowe, T. Schalk, A. Webster, University of California, Santa Cruz • M. Kuss, N. Lumb, G. Spandre, INFN-Pisa and University of Pisa

30. Good Teamwork was the Key for our Success Integration Command and Data Flow Responsibilities Payload Responsibilities