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Full simulation of the LUCID experiment in the Low Earth Orbit radiation environment

2015; Institute of Physics; Volume: 10; Issue: 03 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1088/1748-0221/10/03/c03043

1748-0221

T. Whyntie, M. Harrison,

Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena

The Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector (LUCID) experiment is a satellite-based device that uses five Timepix hybrid silicon pixel detectors to make measurements of the radiation environment at an altitude of approximately 630 km, i.e. in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) . The experiment launched aboard Surrey Satellite Technology Limited's (SSTL's) TechDemoSat-1 on Tuesday the 8th of July 2014. The Timepix detectors, developed by the Medipix2 Collaboration, are arranged to form the five sides of a cube enclosed by a 0.7 mm thick aluminium covering, and are operated in Time-over-Threshold (ToT) mode to allow the flux, energy and directionality of incident ionising radiation to be measured. To understand the expected detector performance with respect to these measurements, the LUCID experiment has been modelled using the Allpix software package, a generic simulation toolkit for silicon pixel detectors built upon the GEANT4 framework. The work presented here summarises studies completed using the GridPP Collaboration's computing grid infrastructure to perform the simulations, store the resultant datasets, and share that data with the LUCID Collaboration. The analysis of these datasets has given an indication of the expected performance in differing space radiation environments (for example, during passes of the polar regions or the South Atlantic Anomaly), and has allowed the LUCID Collaboration to prepare for when data is transmitted back to Earth in late 2014.