Design and construction of the Mini-Calorimeter of the AGILE satellite

TL;DR

The paper details the design, construction, and performance of the Mini-Calorimeter (MCAL) instrument on the AGILE satellite, a gamma-ray and hard-X astrophysics mission launched in 2007.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive description of MCAL's design, construction, and operational performance in space.

Findings

MCAL successfully detects gamma rays and charged particles in the 300keV - 100MeV range.

The instrument operates effectively both independently and as part of the AGILE payload.

Performance metrics demonstrate MCAL's suitability for transient and gamma-ray burst detection.

Abstract

AGILE is a small space mission of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) devoted to gamma-ray and hard-X astrophysics, successfully launched on April 23 2007. The AGILE Payload is composed of three instruments: a gamma-ray imager based on a tungsten-silicon tracker (ST), for observations in the gamma ray energy range 30MeV - 50GeV, a Silicon based X-ray detector, SuperAGILE (SA), for imaging in the range 18keV - 60keV and a CsI(Tl) Mini-Calorimeter (MCAL) that detects gamma rays or charged particles energy loss in the range 300keV - 100MeV. MCAL is composed of 30 CsI(Tl) scintillator bars with photodiode readout at both ends, arranged in two orthogonal layers. MCAL can work both as a slave of the ST and as an independent gamma-ray detector for transients and gamma-ray bursts detection. In this paper a detailed description of MCAL is presented together with its performance.