Mini-EUSO software

The Mini-EUSO instrument is designed by the JEM-EUSO collaboration to pave the way for space-based observations of Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays (EECRs). Having been launched to the the International Space Station (ISS) on the 22nd August 2019, it is a small UV (300 - 400 nm) telescope which will observe the Earth’s atmosphere with a spatial resolution of around 6 km. Mini-EUSO is capable of detecting a wide variety of UV events such as cosmic ray signals, transient luminous events and meteors with a minimum time resolution of 2.5 μs.

The flight software is fully automated and takes advantage of the frequent day/night cycles of the ISS orbit and ancillary instruments with which Mini-EUSO is equipped in order to optimise the mission’s scientific output. The software is responsible for the control of all instrument subsystems and data acquisition. This is achieved with an object oriented design using C++11 and is documented here. For a detailed explaination of the software requirements, development and functionality, see F. Capel et al., Mini-EUSO data acquisition and control software. Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems, 5(4), p.044009 (2019). For a full description of the Mini-EUSO instrument and its scientific goals see F. Capel et al., Mini-EUSO: A high resolution detector for the study of terrestrial and cosmic UV emission from the International Space Station, Advances in Space Research (2017).

The source code for this project can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/cescalara/minieuso_cpu

Further information on the status of the Mini-EUSO integration and testing as well as technical documnments can be found on the Mini-EUSO wiki page: https://jemeuso.riken.jp/wiki/index.php?Mini-EUSO (members only).

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