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arXiv · 1907.06842

GRID: a Student Project to Monitor the Transient Gamma-Ray Sky in the Multi-Messenger Astronomy Era

Abstract

The Gamma-Ray Integrated Detectors (GRID) is a space mission concept dedicated to monitoring the transient gamma-ray sky in the energy range from 10 keV to 2 MeV using scintillation detectors onboard CubeSats in low Earth orbits. The primary targets of GRID are the gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in the local universe. The scientific goal of GRID is, in synergy with ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors such as LIGO and VIRGO, to accumulate a sample of GRBs associated with the merger of two compact stars and study jets and related physics of those objects. It also involves observing and studying other gamma-ray transients such as long GRBs, soft gamma-ray repeaters, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, and solar flares. With multiple CubeSats in various orbits, GRID is unaffected by the Earth occultation and serves as a full-time and all-sky monitor. Assuming a horizon of 200 Mpc for ground-based GW detectors, we expect to see a few associated GW-GRB events per year. With about 10 CubeSats in operation, GRID is capable of localizing a faint GRB like 170817A with a 90% error radius of about 10 degrees, through triangulation and flux modulation. GRID is proposed and developed by students, with considerable contribution from undergraduate students, and will remain operated as a student project in the future. The current GRID collaboration involves more than 20 institutes and keeps growing. On August 29th, the first GRID detector onboard a CubeSat was launched into a Sun-synchronous orbit and is currently under test.

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Jiaxing Wen, Xiangyun Long, Xutao Zheng, Yu An, Zhengyang Cai, Jirong Cang, Yuepeng Che, Changyu Chen, Liangjun Chen, Qianjun Chen, Ziyun Chen, Yingjie Cheng, Litao Deng, Wei Deng, Wenqing Ding, Hangci Du, Lian Duan, Quan Gan, Tai Gao, Zhiying Gao, Wenbin Han, Yiying Han, Xinbo He, Xinhao He, Long Hou, Fan Hu, Junling Hu, Bo Huang, Dongyang Huang, Xuefeng Huang, Shihai Jia, Yuchen Jiang, Yifei Jin, Ke Li, Siyao Li, Yurong Li, Jianwei Liang, Yuanyuan Liang, Wei Lin, Chang Liu, Gang Liu, Mengyuan Liu, Rui Liu, Tianyu Liu, Wanqiang Liu, Di'an Lu, Peiyibin Lu, Zhiyong Lu, Xiyu Luo, Sizheng Ma, Yuanhang Ma, Xiaoqing Mao, Yanshan Mo, Qiyuan Nie, Shuiyin Qu, Xiaolong Shan, Gengyuan Shi, Weiming Song, Zhigang Sun, Xuelin Tan, Songsong Tang, Mingrui Tao, Boqin Wang, Yue Wang, Zhiang Wang, Qiaoya Wu, Xuanyi Wu, Yuehan Xia, Hengyuan Xiao, Wenjin Xie, Dacheng Xu, Rui Xu, Weili Xu, Longbiao Yan, Shengyu Yan, Dongxin Yang, Hang Yang, Haoguang Yang, Yi-Si Yang, Yifan Yang, Lei Yao, Huan Yu, Yangyi Yu, Aiqiang Zhang, Bingtao Zhang, Lixuan Zhang, Maoxing Zhang, Shen Zhang, Tianliang Zhang, Yuchong Zhang, Qianru Zhao, Ruining Zhao, Shiyu Zheng, Xiaolong Zhou, Runyu Zhu, Yu Zou, Peng An, Yifu Cai, Hongbing Chen, Zigao Dai. 2019-07-16. GRID: a Student Project to Monitor the Transient Gamma-Ray Sky in the Multi-Messenger Astronomy Era. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10686-019-09636-w

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