We describe the design, performance and scientific objectives of the NASA-funded ALICE instrument aboard the ESA Rosetta asteroid flyby/comet rendezvous mission. ALICE is a lightweight, low-power, and low-cost imaging spectrograph optimized for cometary far-ultraviolet (FUV) spectroscopy. It will be the first UV spectrograph to study a comet at close range. It is designed to obtain spatially-resolved spectra of Rosetta mission targets in the 700-2050 Å spectral band with a spectral resolution between 8 Å and 12 Å for extended sources that fill its ~0.05° x 6.0° field-of-view. ALICE employs an off-axis telescope feeding a 0.15-m normal incidence Rowland circle spectrograph with a concave holographic reflection grating. The imaging microchannel plate detector utilizes dual solar-blind opaque photocathodes (KBr and CsI) and employs a 2-D delay-line readout array. The instrument is controlled by an internal microprocessor. During the prime Rosetta mission, ALICE will characterize comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma, its nucleus, and the nucleus/coma coupling; during cruise to the comet, ALICE will make observations of the mission's two asteroid flyby targets and of Mars, its moons, and of Earth's moon. ALICE has already successfully completed the in-flight commissioning phase and is operating normally in flight. It has been characterized in flight with stellar flux calibrations, observations of the Moon during the first Earth fly-by, and observations of comet Linear T7 in 2004 and comet 9P/Tempel 1 during the 2005 Deep Impact comet-collision observing campaign.
The measurements of the electron cloud footprints produced by a stack of microchannel plates ͑MCPs͒ as a function of gain, MCP-to-readout distance and accelerating electric field are presented. To investigate the charge footprint variation, we introduce a ballistic model of the charge cloud propagation based on the energy and angular distribution at the MCP output. We also simulate the Coulomb repulsion in the electron cloud, which is likely to cause the experimentally observed increase in the cloud size with increasing MCP gain. Calculation results for both models are compared to the charge footprint sizes measured both in our experiments with high rear-field values ͑ϳ200-900 V/mm͒ and in the experiments of Edgar et al. ͓Rev. Sci. Instrum. 60, 3673 ͑1989͔͒ ͑accelerating electric field ϳ30-130 V/mm͒.
The spatial resolution of high-accuracy microchannel plate (MCP) detectors has reached the values, where the so-called detector walk (or image blurring) may start to limit any further improvements. Image blurring with gain is studied in detail for detectors incorporating angular-biased MCPs. It was found that the presence of the pore bias at the output MCP results in a variation of the charge footprint position for events with different gains. Events with higher gains are shifted in the direction of the pore bias and the absolute value of this shift is directly proportional to the absolute value of the detector gain. Variation of the detector modal gain from 7.5×106 to 2.5×107 resulted in a ∼100 μm image offset for a 13°-biased MCP positioned at a distance of 8.5 mm from the anode with an accelerating rear field of 75 V/mm. We also extended our previous study of another type of detector walk associated with fluctuations of the accelerating rear field. Image displacements as functions of the rear accelerating field for both 13°- and 19°-biased MCPs were measured and compared with the results of computer simulation based on our charge cloud propagation model presented earlier. A good agreement between the experimental and simulated data verifies the validity of the model for different MCPs.
We advocate support of research aimed at developing alternatives to the photomultiplier tube for photon detection in large astroparticle experiments such as gamma-ray and neutrino astronomy, and direct dark matter detectors. Specifically, we discuss the development of large area photocathode microchannel plate photomultipliers and silicon photomultipliers. Both technologies have the potential to exhibit improved photon detection efficiency compared to existing glass vacuum photomultiplier tubes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.