The pGAPS experiment: an engineering balloon flight of prototype GAPS

• Main Authors: Fuke, Hideyuki, Ong, Rene A, Aramaki, Tsuguo, Bando, Nobutaka, Boggs, Steven E, Doetinchem, Philip v, Gahbauer, Florian H, Hailey, Charles J, Koglin, Jason E, Madden, Norm, Mognet, Samuel Adam I, Mori, Kaya, Okazaki, Shun, Perez, Kerstin M, Yoshida, Tetsuya, Zweerink, Jeffrey
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: arXiv 2013
• Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics astro-ph.IM; Instrumentation and Detectors physics.ins-det; FOS Physical sciences; Antarctic; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1303.0380; https://arxiv.org/abs/1303.0380

The General Anti-Particle Spectrometer (GAPS) project is being carried out to search for primary cosmic-ray antiparticles especially for antideuterons produced by cold dark matter. GAPS plans to realize the science observation by Antarctic long duration balloon flights in the late 2010s. In preparation for the Antarctic science flights, an engineering balloon flight using a prototype of the GAPS instrument, "pGAPS", was successfully carried out in June 2012 in Japan to verify the basic performance of each GAPS subsystem. The outline of the pGAPS flight campaign is briefly reported. : submitted to (30/Dec/2012) and accepted by (21/Jun/2013) Advances in Space Research