Speaker
Description
COSI, the Compton Spectrometer and Imager, is a balloon-borne gamma-ray telescope (0.2-5 MeV) utilizing high-purity Germanium double-sided strip detectors. In spring 2016, COSI had a very successful 46-day balloon flight from Wanaka, New Zealand, utilizing NASA’s new super-pressure balloon platform, taking COSI 1.5 times around the world. During the flight, COSI observed gamma-ray bursts, compact objects, the Galactic 511-keV annihilation emission, Galactic nucleosynthesis, and relativistic electron precipitation events.
In summer 2017, an upgraded version of COSI called COSI-X was selected for a Phase A study as a mission of opportunity under NASA’s Explorer program. COSI-X will feature more detectors with higher position resolution, an updated read-out system, and an improved anti-coincidence system, which will all together lead to significantly improved angular resolution, more resolved Compton events, higher effective area, better background rejection, and an overall higher instrument sensitivity. The first of three proposed balloon flights is planned for 2021-2023.
In the presentation, we will show the latest analysis results from COSI and detail the path forward from COSI to COSI-X.
