Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) instrument onboard ASTROSAT

ASTROSAT is India's first science satellite dedicated to multiwavelength astronomy. It has five science payloads which will cover UV to hard X-ray in low earth orbit. 

The Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) instrument is one of the major instruments (419 kg) , quite complex in nature with total 150 electronic cards and is being developed indigenously at TIFR. Its development had been facing serious problems in the past and was way behind the other four ASTROSAT science payloads. LAXPC development has shown good progress during last two years and all the issues have been resolved. We have reaslised detector's capabilities like energy resolution, time accuracy etc as proposed initially. All the three space flight units (total eight flight packages) of LAXPC instrument have been handed over to the ISAC AIT lab (ISRO) for integration with satellite bus during April- October 2014 after completing all space qualification tests and final calibration. In orbit, LAXPC will provide largest effective area in the world for next 5-10 years in 3-80 keV energy range. Large effective area, fine time resolution and moderate energy resolution will allow the LAXPC instrument to probe certain properties of X-ray sources with unprecedented detail. In this talk, I will describe the LAXPC developmental work, its salient features and the science areas where LAXPC instrument is likely to make important contributions.