In order to optimise the design of space instruments making use of detection materials with low atomic numbers, an understanding of the atmospheric neutron environment and its dependencies on time and position is needed. To produce a simple equation based model, Monte Carlo simulations were performed to obtain the atmospheric neutron fluxes produced by charged galactic cosmic ray interactions with the atmosphere. Based on the simulation results the omnidirectional neutron environment was parametrised including dependencies on altitude, magnetic latitude and solar activity. The upward-and downward-moving component of the atmospheric neutron flux are considered separately. The energy spectra calculated using these equations were found to be in good agreement with data from a purpose built balloon-borne neutron detector, high altitude aircraft data and previously published simulation based spectra.

The Dark Matter Particle Explorer (DAMPE) is a space-borne high-energy charged cosmic ray and gamma-ray detector launched on December 17, 2015. After more than three years of operation in space, about 6 billion events are recorded, including 0.2 million photons above GeV energies. In this talk, we introduce some fundamental works of DAMPE. The preliminary results for the bright source list, the monochromatic gamma-ray line search and the pulsar analysis are also presented.

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Since its launch, in December 2015, the satellite-based DAMPE (DArk Matter Particle Explorer) particle detector is taking data smoothly. The Silicon-Tungsten tracKer-converter (STK) of DAMPE consists of six tracking planes (6x, 6y) of single-sided silicon micro-strip detectors mounted on seven support trays. The STK is able to measure the charge and precisely reconstruct the track of traversing charged particles. Tungsten plates (1 mm thick) are integrated in the second, third and fourth tray from the top to serve as γ → e + e − converters. Commissioned rapidly after the launch, the STK is running extremely well since then. The STK in-orbit calibration and performance during its first more than 5 years of operation, including the noise behaviour and the thermal and mechanical stability, will be presented in this contribution.