Mini-EUSO mission to study Earth UV emissions on board the ISS
Abstract
Mini-EUSO is a telescope observing the Earth in the ultraviolet band from the International Space Station. It is a part of the JEM-EUSO program, paving the way to future larger missions, such as KEUSO and POEMMA, devoted primarily to the observation of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays from space. Mini-EUSO is capable of observing Extensive Air Showers generated by Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays with an energy above 10^21 eV and detect artificial showers generated with lasers from the ground. Other main scientific objectives of the mission are the search for nuclearites and Strange Quark Matter, the study of atmospheric phenomena such as Transient Luminous Events, meteors and meteoroids, the observation of sea bioluminescence and of artificial satellites and man-made space debris. Mini-EUSO will map the night-time Earth in the UV range (290 - 430 nm), with a spatial resolution of about 6.3 km and a temporal resolution of 2.5 microseconds, through a nadir-facing UV-transparent window in the Russian Zvezda module. The instrument, launched on August 22, 2019 from the Baikonur cosmodrome, is based on an optical system employing two Fresnel lenses and a focal surface composed of 36 Multi-Anode Photomultiplier tubes, 64 channels each, for a total of 2304 channels with single photon counting sensitivity and an overall field of view of 44 degrees. Mini-EUSO also contains two ancillary cameras to complement measurements in the near infrared and visible ranges. In this paper we describe the detector and present the various phenomena observed in the first months of operations.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2010.01937,
title = {Mini-EUSO mission to study Earth UV emissions on board the ISS},
author = {S. Bacholle and P. Barrillon and M. Battisti and A. Belov and M. Bertaina and F. Bisconti and C. Blaksley and S. Blin-Bondil and F. Cafagna and G. Cambiè and F. Capel and M. Casolino and M. Crisconio and I. Churilo and G. Cotto and C. de la Taille and A. Djakonow and T. Ebisuzaki and F. Fenu and A. Franceschi and C. Fuglesang and P. Gorodetzky and A. Haungs and F. Kajino and H. Kasuga and B. Khrenov and P. Klimov and S. Kochepasov and V. Kuznetsov and L. Marcelli and W. Marszal and M. Mignone and G. Mascetti and H. Miyamoto and A. Murashov and T. Napolitano and A. V. Olinto and H. Ohmori and G. Osteria and M. Panasyuk and M. Porfilio and A. Poroshin and E. Parizot and P. Picozza and L. W. Piotrowski and Z. Plebaniak and G. Prevot and M. Przybylak and E. Reali and M. Ricci and N. Sakaki and K. Shinozaki and J. Szabelski and Y. Takizawa and S. Turriziani and M. Traiche G. Valentini and S. Wada and L. Wiencke and I. Yashin and A. Zuccaro-Marchi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.01937},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
23 pages, 20 figures