Speaker
Description
The effects of space weather events and galactic cosmic-rays (GCRs) are involved in many atmospheric processes, and as such, there is a desire to understand and characterise the airspace radiation environment. Typically, instrumentation onboard satellites, and ground-based instrumentation, are used for primary and secondary particle detection, respectively. Such instrumentation are complementary for GCR measurement and space weather monitoring, however the interactions of GCRs and other energetic particles are nonuniform throughout the atmosphere. Therefore, instrumentation which can be deployed in this intermediary region is highly desirable.
The AMORE (Airspace Measurement of Radiation Environment) instrument is a novel ΔE-E-ΔE particle telescope capable of energy and position discrimination tasked with in-situ measurements of the upper troposphere and stratospheric radiation environments. The Demonstration Model (DM) is composed of two thin (52x52x2 mm$^\textrm{3}$) BC-400 ΔE-scintillators situated at the top and bottom faces of a large (50x50x50 mm$^\textrm{3}$) BC-400 E-scintillator. Optical readout is performed with Silicon Photomultipliers; there are two channels for the E-scintillator (read at the top and bottom of the geometry), and there are single channel outputs for each ΔE-scintillator.
We present the positional and energy response of the AMORE DM to proton energies ranging from 30-200 MeV at the Proton Irradiation Facility located at the Paul Scherrer Institut. The energy response is crucial to understanding the radiation environment during deployment, and the positional response provides insight as to how particles with differing trajectories manifest within the detector system. Additionally, we provide details for the upcoming deployment of the AMORE DM onboard commercial aircraft with the goal of flying before and during space weather events.
