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Kvant
The Kvant 1 module (Kvant means 'quantum' in Russian) was
launched on 31 March 1987 and attached to the Mir space station on
12 April 1987. After that,
the Mir-Kvant observatory successfully operated
until fall 1989, at which time operation was stopped for a planned
reconfiguration of the Mir station. Kvant was "restarted"
in October 1990
with calibration observations showing no apparent degradation in
performance from the year off. There are 4 high-energy instruments in the
module: TTM/COMIS - a coded mask imaging spectrometer, HEXE - a set of 4
scintillators, GSPC - a scintillation proportional counter, and Pulsar X-1 - a set
of 4 scintillators. All 4 experiments point toward the same source at the same
time. These experiments, taken together, are sometimes referred to as
the RÖNTGEN Suite or Observatory.
The orbital period of the Mir station is 90 minutes. At an inclination
of 57 degrees, some 20 minutes of each orbit of each orbit are spent outside
the radiation belts. Spacecraft stabilization over a 20 minute period has
been found to be better than 2 arcminutes. The Kvant module is 19 feet long
and 13.6 feet across at its widest point. A cosmonaut controls the
observations from a pressurized cabin inside the module.
TTM/COMIS is a wide-angle camera that uses a coded aperture mask to
determine source location. It covers the energy range 2-30 keV with a 7.8 deg
x 7.8 deg field of view FWHM. The geometric area is 655 sq-cm. It can
achieve an angular resolution of 2 arcminutes and a time resolution of 1 s.
The Galactic center region was imaged withthe TTM demonstrating the efficiency of
coded mask telescopes observations in hard X-rays.
HEXE, or High Energy X-ray Experiment, employs a phoswich of sodium iodide
and cesium iodide. It covers the energy range 15-200 keV with a 1.6 deg x
1.6 deg field of view FWHM. Each of the 4 identical detectors has a geometric area of
200 sq-cm. The maximum time resolution is 0.3-25 ms.
GSPC, also called Sirene 2, is a gas scintillation proportional counter. It
covers the energy range 2-100 keV with a 3 deg x 3 deg field of view
FWHM. The detector geometric area is 300 sq-cm. The instrument has a maximum
time resolution of 1.25-2.5 ms.
Pulsar X-1 consists of 4 phoswich detectors which covers the energy range
50-800 keV with a 3 deg x 3 deg field of view FWHM. Each of the 4 identical
detectors has 314 sq-cm geometric area. The maximum time resolution is 10 s.
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Page authors: Lorella Angelini Jesse Allen
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Last modified: Wednesday, 23-Feb-2022 19:35:48 EST
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