A General Overview for Localizing Short Gamma-ray Bursts with a CubeSat Mega-Constellation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a CubeSat mega-constellation named IMPACT for rapid, accurate localization of short gamma-ray bursts to facilitate multi-messenger astronomy, building on previous gravitational wave detections like GW170817.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mega-constellation design of approximately 80 CubeSats equipped with gamma-ray detectors for near-real-time SGRB localization.

Findings

IMPACT can localize SGRBs within about 5 seconds.

The constellation design considers delays, data rates, and coding for optimal performance.

It enables ground-based telescopes to quickly follow up on gamma-ray bursts.

Abstract

The Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on the {\it Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope}, for the first time, detected a short gamma ray burst (SGRB) signal that accompanies a gravitational wave signal GW170817 in 2017. The detection and localization of the gravitational wave and gamma-ray source led all other space- and ground-based observatories to measure its kilonova and afterglow across the electromagnetic spectrum, which started a new era in astronomy, the so-called multi-messenger astronomy. Therefore, localizations of short gamma-ray bursts, as counterparts of verified gravitational waves, is of crucial importance since this will allow observatories to measure the kilonovae and afterglows associated with these explosions. Our results show that, an automated network of observatories, such as the Stellar Observations Network Group (SONG), can be coupled with an interconnected multi-hop array of CubeSats for transients (IMPACT) to localize SGRBs. IMPACT is a mega-constellation of $\sim$80 CubeSats, each of which is equipped with gamma-ray detectors with ultra-high temporal resolution to conduct full sky surveys in an energy range of 50-300 keV and downlink the required data promptly for high accuracy localization of the detected SGRB to a ground station. Additionally, we analyze propagation and transmission delays from receipt of a SGRB signal to ground station offload to consider the effects of constellation design, link, and network parameters such as satellites per plane, data rate, and coding gain from erasure correcting codes among others. IMPACT will provide near-real-time localization of SGRBs with a total delay of $\sim$5 s, and will enable SONG telescopes to join the efforts to pursue multi-messenger astronomy and help decipher the underlying physics of these events.