The ComPair balloon instrument is a prototype gamma-ray telescope that aims to further develop technology for observing the gamma-ray sky in the MeV regime. ComPair combines four detector subsystems to enable parallel Compton scattering and pair-production detection, critical for observing in this energy range. This includes a 10 layer double-sided silicon strip detector tracker, a virtual Frisch grid low energy CZT calorimeter, a high energy CsI calorimeter, and a plastic scintillator anti-coincidence detector. The inaugural balloon flight successfully launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility site in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, in late August 2023, lasting approximately 6.5 hours in duration. In this proceeding, we discuss the development of the ComPair Since balloon payload, the performance during flight, and early results.
@article{arxiv.2410.02557,
title = {The 2023 Balloon Flight of the ComPair Instrument},
author = {Lucas D. Smith and Nicholas Cannady and Regina Caputo and Carolyn Kierans and Nicholas Kirschner and Iker Liceaga-Indart and Julie McEnery and Zachary Metzler and A. A. Moiseev and Lucas Parker and Jeremy Perkins and Makoto Sasaki and Adam J. Schoenwald and Daniel Shy and Janeth Valverde and Sambid Wasti and Richard Woolf and Aleksey Bolotnikov and Thomas J. Caligiure and A. Wilder Crosier and Jack Fried and Priyarshini Ghosh and Sean Griffin and J. Eric Grove and Elizabeth Hays and Emily Kong and John Mitchell and Bernard Phlips and Clio Sleator and D. J. Thompson and Eric Wulf and Anna Zajczyk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.02557},
year = {2024}
}