Early results from GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2

TL;DR

This paper reports early results from two CubeSat missions, GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2, demonstrating their capability to detect gamma-ray bursts and solar flares, validating the detector technology and operational viability in low-Earth orbit.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gamma-ray detector system on CubeSats and provides initial performance data and detection results, supporting future nanosatellite-based GRB monitoring.

Findings

GRBAlpha detected 5 GRBs within a year, including high-resolution spectra.

VZLUSAT-2 detected 3 GRBs and 2 solar flares, confirming detector performance.

Approximately 67% of low-Earth polar orbit is suitable for GRB detection.

Abstract

We present the detector performance and early science results from GRBAlpha, a 1U CubeSat mission, which is a technological pathfinder to a future constellation of nanosatellites monitoring gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). GRBAlpha was launched in March 2021 and operates on a 550 km altitude sun-synchronous orbit. The gamma-ray burst detector onboard GRBAlpha consists of a 75x75x5 mm CsI(Tl) scintillator, read out by a dual-channel multi-pixel photon counter (MPPC) setup. It is sensitive in the ~30-900 keV range. The main goal of GRBAlpha is the in-orbit demonstration of the detector concept, verification of the detector's lifetime, and measurement of the background level on low-Earth orbit, including regions inside the outer Van Allen radiation belt and in the South Atlantic Anomaly. GRBAlpha has already detected five, both long and short, GRBs and two bursts were detected within a time-span of only 8 hours, proving that nanosatellites can be used for routine detection of gamma-ray transients. For one GRB, we were able to obtain a high resolution spectrum and compare it with measurements from the Swift satellite. We find that, due to the variable background, the time fraction of about 67 % of the low-Earth polar orbit is suitable for gamma-ray burst detection. One year after launch, the detector performance is good and the degradation of the MPPC photon counters remains at an acceptable level. The same detector system, but double in size, was launched in January 2022 on VZLUSAT-2 (3U CubeSat). It performs well and already detected three GRBs and two solar flares. Here, we present early results from this mission as well.