COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope that will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. The mission is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory; the University of California, San Diego; the Naval Research Laboratory; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Northrop Grumman; Space Dynamics Laboratory; the Italian Space Agency; and a number of research institutions.
COSI is a wide-field gamma-ray telescope that will study energetic phenomena in the Milky Way and beyond, including the creation and destruction of matter and antimatter and the final stages of the lives of stars. The mission is a collaboration between the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory; the University of California, San Diego; the Naval Research Laboratory; NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center; Northrop Grumman; Space Dynamics Laboratory; the Italian Space Agency; and a number of research institutions.
COSI is an Astrophysics Small Explorer satellite mission that will probe the origins of our galaxy’s antimatter, uncover sites in our galaxy where complex atomic nuclei form, perform pioneering studies of gamma-ray polarization, and find counterparts to sources detected by means other than light, such as gravitational waves. COSI will employ a soft gamma-ray telescope using new technology to provide groundbreaking science.
The COSI satellite design is the result of extensive technology development that has been tested on scientific balloons over the past two decades. The latest flight was in 2016 aboard a NASA super pressure balloon, which is designed for long flights and heavy lifts.
COSI will help us advance our understanding of the creation and destruction of matter in the Milky Way and beyond. It operates at gamma-ray energies up to millions of times greater than visible light — between 0.2 and 5 million electron volts (MeV) — that uniquely probe astrophysical processes occurring among atomic nuclei, allowing us to directly see where new elements are being formed in our galaxy.
Related Publications
2023.
"The Compton Spectrometer and Imager.",
arXiv e-prints,arXiv:2308.12362
[10.48550/arXiv.2308.12362]
[Journal Article/Letter]
