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arXiv · 1911.07550

Calibration of RADMON Radiation Monitor Onboard Aalto-1 CubeSat

Philipp Oleynik·Rami Vainio·Arttu Punkkinen·Oleksiy Dudnik·Jan Gieseler·Hannu-Pekka Hedman·Heli Hietala·Edward Hæggström·Petri Niemelä·Juhani Peltonen·Jaan Praks·Risto Punkkinen·Tero Säntti·Eino Valtonen
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Abstract

RADMON is a small radiation monitor designed and assembled by students of the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki. It is flown on-board Aalto-1, a 3-unit CubeSat in low Earth orbit at about 500 km altitude. The detector unit of the instrument consists of two detectors, a Si solid-state detector and a CsI(Tl) scintillator, and utilizes the \textDelta{E}-E technique to determine the total energy and species of each particle hitting the detector. We present the results of the on-ground and in-flight calibration campaigns of the instrument, as well as the characterization of its response through extensive simulations within the Geant4 framework. The overall energy calibration margin achieved is about 5\%. The full instrument response to protons and electrons is presented and the issue of proton contamination of the electron channels is quantified and discussed.

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Philipp Oleynik, Rami Vainio, Arttu Punkkinen, Oleksiy Dudnik, Jan Gieseler, Hannu-Pekka Hedman, Heli Hietala, Edward Hæggström, Petri Niemelä, Juhani Peltonen, Jaan Praks, Risto Punkkinen, Tero Säntti, Eino Valtonen. 2019-11-18. Calibration of RADMON Radiation Monitor Onboard Aalto-1 CubeSat. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2019.11.020

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