Volume 501 - 39th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2025) - Cosmic-Ray Direct & Acceleration
The TIGERISS Galactic Cosmic Ray Detector
B. Rauch*, H. Allen, R. F. Borda, R. G. Bose, D. L. Braun, J. Calderon, Z. Campbell, N. W. Cannady, R. M. Caputo, M. Clark, J. Coldsmith, S. Coutu, G. A. de Nolfo, T. Forstmeier, M. Fratta, P. Ghosh, S. Graham, S. Jones, J. F. Krizmanic, W. Labrador, L. Lisalda, J. Vanderlei Martins, M. P. McPherson, J. G. Mitchell, J. W. Mitchell, S. I. Mognet, A. Moiseev, T. L. Ng, S. Nutter, N. Osborn, M. Pant, I. M. Pastrana, D. Radomski, B. F. Rauch, H. Salmani, M. Sasaki, G. E. Simburger, S. Smith, H. A. Tolentino, Y. Tufail, D. Washington, T. Widmyer, L. Williams, W. V. Zober  on behalf of the TIGERISS collaborationet al. (click to show)
*: corresponding author
Full text: pdf
Pre-published on: September 23, 2025
Published on: December 30, 2025
Abstract
The Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder for the International Space Station (TIGERISS) is a
Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) detector being developed as a NASA Astrophysics Pioneers mission
to launch to the ISS in 2027. TIGERISS has been assigned the Starboard Overhead X-Direction
(SOX) location on the Columbus External Payload Facility (EPF) of the ISS. It will be the first
instrument to measure the GCR elemental abundances from $_{5}B$ to $_{82}Pb$ over ∼400 MeV/nucleon to
∼10 GeV/nucleon with single element resolution. TIGERISS builds on the heritage of the TIGER
and SuperTIGER stratospheric balloon-borne experiments flown from Antarctica and uses the
proven combination of ionization (dE/dx) detectors with acrylic and silica aerogel Cherenkov-
light-radiator (∝𝛽) detectors for charge and energy measurements. It improves on the predecessor
instruments by using silicon strip detectors (SSDs) in place of both scintillating fiber hodoscopes for
track reconstruction and large area scintillator detectors for dE/dx measurement and the instrument
trigger. The superior charge resolution (𝜎𝑍 < 0.25) and signal linearity over the full dynamic range
of the TIGERISS SSDs have been demonstrated in CERN beam tests. TIGERISS will also use
silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) instead of photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) to forego the need for
high voltage (HV) and for the more compact Cherenkov detector readout needed to maximize the
instrument geometry within the payload envelope. This enables an instrument geometry factor of
1.21 $m^{2}$ sr that will allow TIGERISS in one year to observe GCR statistics comparable to those
observed in the first 55-day SuperTIGER flight over their common measurement range without
the systematics from atmospheric propagation corrections. With the possibility of extended
observations, TIGERISS will test models of GCR origins, including their source environments
and acceleration mechanisms. In measuring GCRs over nearly the entirety of the s-process and
r-process (slow and rapid) neutron capture processes and the rp-process rapid-proton capture
process of heavy-element nucleosynthesis, TIGERISS will make a significant contribution to the
wider multi-messenger effort to determine the relative contributions of supernovae (SNe) and
Neutron Star Merger (NSM) events.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.501.0118
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