Space Technology

Early experimenters in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy found that their detectors, flown on balloons or sounding rockets, were corrupted by the large fluxes of high-energy photon and cosmic-ray charged-particle events. Gamma-rays, in particular, could be collimated by surrounding the detectors with heavy shielding materials made of lead or other such elements, but it was quickly discovered that the high fluxes of very penetrating high energy radiations present in the near-space environment, created showers of secondary particles that could not be stopped by reasonable shielding masses. To solve this problem, detectors operating above 10 or 100 keV were often surrounded by an active anticoincidence shield made of some other detector, which could be used to reject the unwanted background events. Plastic scintillators are often used to reject charged particles, while thicker CsI, bismuth germanate ("BGO"), or other active shielding materials are used to detect and veto gamma-ray events of non-cosmic origin. A typical configuration might have a NaI scintillator almost completely surrounded by a thick CsI anticoincidence shield, with a hole or holes to allow the desired gamma rays to enter from the cosmic source under study. A plastic scintillator may be used across the front which is reasonably transparent to gamma rays, but efficiently rejects the high fluxes of cosmic-ray protons present in space.