Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2003
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003aas...202.4802g&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 202, #48.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, p.767
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
1
Scientific paper
Swift is a NASA gamma-ray burst MIDEX mission that is in development for launch in December 2003. It is a multiwavelength transient observatory for GRB astronomy. The goals of the mission are to determine the origin of GRBs and their afterglows and use bursts to probe the early Universe. A wide-field gamma-ray camera will detect more than a hundred GRBs per year to 5 times fainter than BATSE. Sensitive narrow-field X-ray and UV/optical telescopes will be pointed at the burst location in 20 to 70 sec by an autonomously controlled "swift" spacecraft. For each burst, arcsec positions will be determined and optical/UV/X-ray/gamma-ray spectrophotometry performed. Measurements of redshift will be made for many of the bursts. The instrumentation is a combination of superb existing flight-spare hardware and design from XMM and Spectrum-X/JET-X contributed by collaborators in the UK and Italy and development of a coded-aperture camera with a large-area ( 0.5 square meter) CdZnTe detector array. The hardware is currently in final stages of fabrication and initial stages of integration and test. Key components of the mission are vigorous follow-up and outreach programs to engage the astronomical community and public in Swift.
Gehrels Neil
Swift Team
No associations
LandOfFree
The Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with The Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Swift Gamma-ray Burst Mission will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1369249