Purpose of the flight and payload description

The instrument used in this experiment was a combination of two scintillation counters, two cerenkov counters, and a multiwire proportional counter hodoscope. The figure at left shows a cross section of the detector system.

The counters labeled T1 and T3 were identical 1 cm. thick scintillators, which were used to determine the charge of penetrating nuclei. T0 was a plastic Cerenkov counter with wave shifter while T2 was a 2 cm. thick liquid Cerenkov counter with Freon. It, too, contained a waveshifter.

The two Cerenkov counters combined provided a continous and overlapping velocity measurement for particles from 400 to about 2500 MeV/nucleon. Each of the counters were enclosed in a white light integration box to gain uniformity of signals over the entire counter area. An annular scintillator, surrounded the bottom of the detector stack and served to reject side showers.

The multiwire proportional counter hodoscope consisted of three chambers, designated MWPC A, B, and C in the scheme, each with wire grids in the x and y directions. The hodoscope determined the trajectory of the particle and also defined the geometrical factor of the instrument. It served to correct the pulse heights from the counters for angle of incidence and for small, residual non uniformities

Details of the balloon flight

Balloon launched on: 9/23/1975
Launch site: Muskogee, Oklahoma, US  
Balloon launched by: National Scientific Balloon Facility (NSBF)
Balloon manufacturer/size/composition: Zero Pressure Balloon Winzen 593.316 m3 (12.70 microns Stratofilm)
Flight identification number: 116N
End of flight (L for landing time, W for last contact, otherwise termination time): 9/26/1975
Balloon flight duration (F: time at float only, otherwise total flight time in d:days / h:hours or m:minutes - ): 67 h
Payload weight: 1722 kgs

External references

If you consider that this website is interesting or useful, you can help to keep it running with just the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee. Click on the button on the right for more information.



4746