Paper 13093-90
Paper 13093-90
BurstCube: a CubeSat for gravitational wave counterparts
21 June 2024 • 10:30 - 10:50 Japan Standard Time | Room G414/415, North - 4F
Abstract
BurstCube is a 6U (10 x 20 x 30 cm) CubeSat designed to detect gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and enable multi-messenger observations, scheduled to launch in early 2024. BurstCube science is informed by the coincident detection of GRB 170817A and gravitational wave (GW) 170817, which confirmed compact binary mergers as progenitors for GRBs. Future coincident detections will also provide important context to the GW measurements - namely constraining the neutron star equation of state and testing fundamental physics, while also probing the origin of GRB prompt emission. Full sky coverage in the gamma-ray regime is needed to increase the likelihood of such measurements. Once in orbit, BurstCube will expand sky coverage while rapidly providing public alerts and localization information to the community using the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) and General Coordinates Network (GCN). This work will describe the current status of the mission, as well as an outline of post-launch operations, performance, and science goals.
Presenter
Ava Myers
NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr. (United States)
Ava Myers is a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center. She received her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh for probing the dark sector with the Higgs boson and missing energy at the LHC in 2022. Since beginning the NASA Postdoctoral Program in 2022, she has been working with the BurstCube team to prepare the cubesat for launch by way of testing the instrument and developing tools for the operations ground system and data pipeline. Her research interests include multi-messenger astrophysics using gamma-ray bursts, dark matter searches, and multivariate approaches to analyzing astrophysics data.