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Detecting dirty bomb material with ESA gamma-ray technology

30 October 2008

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Russia, Moscow : Stationary customs Yantar system for control over fission and radioactive materials

Credits: AFP

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Integral, ESA's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory, is gathering some of the most energetic radiation that comes from space. The spacecraft was launched in October 2002 and is helping to solve some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy.

Gamma rays are even more powerful than the X-rays used in medical examinations. Fortunately, Earth's atmosphere acts as a shield to protect us from this dangerous cosmic radiation. However this means that gamma rays from space can only be detected by satellites.

At time of launch, Integral was the most sensitive gamma-ray observatory ever put into space. It detects radiation from the most violent events far away and from processes that made the Universe habitable.

Credits: ESA

Portable detection device

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High-energy polarised emission from Crab Nebula

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This image shows the direction of polarisation (alignement) of the high-energy radiation emitted by the Crab Nebula, as detected by ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory. The shaded part represents the error in the determination of this direction. This direction is remarkably aligned with the inner jets of the Crab. On their turn, these are aligned with the rotation axis of the pulsar located at the centre of the system.

The Crab Nebula image in the background was obtained by combining an optical image by NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope and an X-ray image by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory.

Click here to listen to the audio file from Crab.

Credits: NASA/CXC/ASU/J. Hester et al.(for the Chandra image); NASA/HST/ASU/J. Hester et al. (for the Hubble image)

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Handheld and backpack human portable radiation detection system launched by Smiths Detection. Symetrica is the technology partner for this project and provides the radiation detection and identification sub-system. The unit includes gamma, neutron and Geiger-Müller (GM) tube detectors, and can identifying highly enriched uranium, plutonium and other radioactive materials, even in very small quantities. Expertise in modelling gamma-ray detectors from Southampton University improved significantly through the participation in developing of the mass-model for the Integral spacecraft was used in the developing of the portable radiation detection system.

Credits: Smiths Detection / Symetrica