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New Technology With Many Potential Applications Incorporated in NASA's SWIFT Satellite Big things come in tiny packages ... 40,000 tiny packages of gamma ray detectors to be exact. The 40,000 thumbtack-sized detectors were recently delivered to the scientists building NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer. The detectors may allow advances in medical and security imaging, also. Swift, scheduled for a 2003 launch, will detect and accurately position gamma ray bursts -- the most energetic events seen in today's Universe. These cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT) detectors are the heart of Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) that will enable scientists to detect and accurately position these mysterious gamma ray bursts, which disappear within seconds, never to appear in the same spot in the sky. A "swift" response is therefore the only way to track down these elusive bursts, and this is the primary goal of NASA's Swift mission. "This delivery is quite a milestone for both the Swift mission and the development of CZT detector technology," said Dr. Ann Parsons, BAT Detector Scientist at Goddard. "Since CZT detectors are very compact and do not require expensive cryogenic cooling systems to operate, large, densely packed arrays can be built for many applications, including medical and security imaging as well as astronomy. The now-proven ability to acquire such large quantities of CZT will allow us to fly a huge BAT detector array that is sensitive enough to detect the faintest gamma-ray bursts, presumably originating from the farthest reaches of the cosmos." U.S.
Rep. Melissa Hart (R, Penn.) and state officials attended a ceremony
this week marking the completion of the 40,000 detectors. The event
was hosted by the detectors' manufacturers, eV Products Inc., in
Saxonburg, Penn. The CZT detectors will do for gamma-ray astronomy
what CCD detectors have done for X-ray and optical astronomy --
that is, create high-resolution images from high-energy photons,
particles of light far more energetic than visible light.
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