LUCID

Use this app to keep up with new information to do with the LUCID project!

You can track the satellite (TechDemoSat1), view data, and keep up to date via our twitter feed!

Here is a bit of background on the project:

The Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector (LUCID) is a device using technology developed at CERN to study radiation space. Designed by students at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, the instrument was developed by Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL), and finally launched into space on a Soyuz rocket in July 2014, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It now flies aboard TechDemoSat-1, 635km above the Earth.
LUCID uses five Timepix detectors, developed by the Medipix collaboration, which can record the shape of traces left by particles of ionising radiation across the detector chip, as well as recording the energy deposited in each pixel. This technology has never been used before in open space, and unlike previous experiments, it allows the directionality of incident particles to be determined with a high accuracy, by exploiting the device’s unique geometry.

Since LUCID has started recording data, the optimal settings for operating the detectors in their environment has been found, and frames captured with this configuration have been analysed to plot maps of the average counts of proton and electron counts across the world’s surface (above).

LUCID will stay in orbit for a number of years, and a vast number of possible analyses and uses of its data remain to be explored. In the near future, the experiment will be used to study both the effects of potentially devastating solar storms and elusive galactic cosmic rays, in addition to possible collaborations with the Timepix detectors aboard the International Space Station, and projects in the arts.