MeV Terrestrial X-ray Bursts with an Arctic Long Duration Balloon Flight and ISTP

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This project will provide an X-ray camera and a germanium spectrometer to study MeV X-ray bursts at very high latitudes. The instrument will be flown on a long-duration balloon flight that is being funded by NASA. This is a reflight of an experiment that was originally flown in 1998. The original experiment was funded in part by NASA and in part by NSF under grant ATM-9806400. That experiment failed because of a failure of the balloon. The original instruments were badly damaged or destroyed in the failure. This project will refurbish and rebuild the necessary components for a new flight. The flight duration is expected to be about two weeks. The first detection of terrestrial X-ray bursts with energies extending up to the MeV range was made in 1996. This experiment will be able to examine the temporal evolution of these high energy bursts, which will help elucidate the mechanism that produces the bursts.