Abstract
The Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 1 (EUSO-SPB1) instrument was launched out of Wanaka, New Zealand, by NASA in April, 2017 as a mission of opportunity. The detector was developed as part of the Joint Experimental Missions for the Extreme Universe Space Observatory (JEM-EUSO) program toward a space-based ultra-high energy cosmic ray (UHECR) telescope with the main objective to make the first observation of UHECRs via the fluorescence technique from suborbital space. The EUSO-SPB1 instrument is a refractive telescope consisting of two 1m2 Fresnel lenses with a high-speed UV camera at the focal plane. The camera has 2304 individual pixels capable of single photoelectron counting with a time resolution of 2.5μ s. A detailed performance study including calibration was done on ground. We separately evaluated the properties of the Photo Detector Module (PDM) and the optical system in the laboratory. An end-to-end test of the instrument was performed during a field campaign in the West Desert in Utah, USA at the Telescope Array (TA) site in September 2016. The campaign lasted for 8 nights. In this article we present the results of the preflight laboratory and field tests. Based on the tests performed in the field, it was determined that EUSO-SPB1 has a field of view of 11.1∘ and an absolute photo-detection efficiency of 10%. We also measured the light flux necessary to obtain a 50% trigger efficiency using laser beams. These measurements were crucial for us to perform an accurate post flight event rate calculation to validate our cosmic ray search. Laser beams were also used to estimated the reconstruction angular resolution. Finally, we performed a flat field measurement in flight configuration at the launch site prior to the launch providing a uniformity of the focal surface better than 6%.
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Acknowledgment
This work was partially supported by NASA grants NNX13AH54G, NNX13AH55G, NNX13AH53G, NNX13AH52G, NNX16AG27G, 80NSSC18K0246, 80NSSC18K0477, 80NSSC18K0473, 80NSSC18K0464, the French Space Agency (CNES), the Italian Space Agency through the ASI INFN agreement n. 2017-8-H.0, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, the Basic Science Interdisciplinary Research Projects of RIKEN and JSPS KAKENHI Grant (22340063, 23340081, and 24244042), by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, the Helmholtz Alliance for Astroparticle Physics funded by the Initiative and Networking Fund of the Helmholtz Association (Germany), by the Mexican funding agencies PAPIIT-UNAM, CONACyT and the Mexican Space Agency (AEM) and by the National Science Centre in Poland grant (2017/27/B/ST9/02162). We acknowledge the Telescope Array Collaboration for the use of their facilities in Utah as well as the Goddard Space Flight Center for the loan of the mirror used for the lens test. We also acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the administrative and technical staffs at our home institutions.
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Adams, J.H., Allen, L., Bachman, R. et al. Extreme Universe Space Observatory on a Super Pressure Balloon 1 calibration: from the laboratory to the desert. Exp Astron 52, 125–140 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-020-09689-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-020-09689-2