Solar Neutron Spectrometer Onboard a 3U CubeSat

Abstract

Solar neutron observations are very important for understanding of nucleon acceleration mechanism in solar flares, but there are only a few tens of detection since the discovery in 1980. This is because solar neutron observations have been mainly carried out from not space but the ground with insufficient sensitivity. For microsatellite applications, we have designed very compact and high sensitive solar neutron and gamma-ray spectrometer utilizing a novel photo-sensor Silicon photo-multiplier. This paper describes concept, design and performance of our detector for micro/nanosatellite applications.