| GRBAlpha and VZLUSAT-2 CubeSats Observing Gamma-Ray Transients |
| Jakub Řípa |
| Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic |
| I will present the detector performance and science results from GRBAlpha, a 1U CubeSat mission, which is a technological pathfinder to a future constellation of nanosatellites monitoring gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) called CAMELOT. GRBAlpha was launched in March 2021 and operates on a 550km altitude sun-synchronous orbit. GRBAlpha has already detected 42 transients including GRBs (long and short), flashes from soft-gamma repeater SGR 1935+2154 and solar flares. Recently, it has detected extraordinarily bright GRB 221009A, which was the most intense GRB ever recorded in the 55 years history of GRB science. Two years after the launch, the detector performance is good and the degradation of the SiPM photon counters remains at an acceptable level. The same detector system, but double in size, was launched in January 2022 on VZLUSAT-2 (3U CubeSat) and it has also detected many GRBs, activity of SGR 1935+2154 and solar flares. This proves that nanosatellites can be used for routine detection of gamma-ray transients. |