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The Miniaturized Electron pRoton Telescope, MERiT, is a low‐mass, low‐power, compact instrument using an innovative combination of particle detectors, sensor electronics, and onboard processing. MERiT is flying on the Compact Radiation belt Explorer, CeREs, a 3U CubeSat launched into a low earth orbit of 500‐km altitude and inclination of 85° on 16 December 2018. The primary and secondary science goals of CeREs are to investigate electron microbursts and to study solar particles. MERiT comprises a stack of solid state detectors (SSD) behind space facing avalanche photo diodes (APDs) surrounded by W‐Al shielding to reduce side‐penetrating particle background. The APD‐SSD combination enables measurement of electrons from 5 to 200 keV and 1 to 8 MeV; protons from 200–400 keV and 7–100 MeV in differential channels with energy resolution ΔE/E≈30% for both electrons and protons. MERiT measures microbursts with a high time resolution ranging from 4 to 16 ms and solar particles with a cadence of 1 s. MERiT energy channels and cadences are software configurable via algorithms and lookup tables residing on a field‐programmable gate array. The lookup tables can be changed via ground commands. MERiT geometry factor is 31 sq.cm‐sr and optimized to measure microbursts with the instrument viewing the local zenith in orbit. MERiT enables investigation of dynamical processes of radiation belt electron energization and loss, solar electron and proton transport, and their access to the Earth's polar caps. We describe the MERiT sensor design, calibration, operational modes, data products, and science goals.

BurstCube aims to expand sky coverage in order to detect, localize, and rapidly disseminate information about gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). BurstCube is a ’6U’ CubeSat with an instrument comprised of 4 Cesium Iodide (CsI) scintillators coupled to arrays of Silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs) and will be sensitive to gamma-rays between 50 keV and 1 MeV. BurstCube will assist current observatories, such as Swift and Fermi, in the detection of GRBs as well as provide astronomical context to gravitational wave (GW) events detected by LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. BurstCube is currently in its development phase with a launch readiness date in early 2022.

The response to 150 GeV/nuc primary lead ($^{208}$Pb) and fragmented (A/Z=2.4, 2.2, 2.0) beams measured a silicon strip detector, designed for use in the Heavy Nuclei eXplorer (HNX) and an upgrade of the Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (SuperTIGER) balloon experiment, was evaluated in a CERN test beam (H8A) during Nov - Dec 2018. The 500 $\mu$m thick, single-sided silicon detectors have 32 DC-coupled strips with 3 mm pitch on the junction side with $9.6 \times 9.6$ cm$^2$ active area. Discrete charge-preamplifiers and shaping amplifiers were used to read out the ohmic and junction side signals simultaneously using the SuperTIGER DAQ system. We report on the response in a configuration where all 32 strips were joined and read out together. The strip detector-under-test was situated between planar silicon detectors, which provided the charge selection as well as a comparison of the measured response of each detector. The combined data set shows excellent charge resolution and finely resolved elemental peaks from helium (Z=2) through lead (Z=82). In this paper, we provide a description of the test beam experiment and the results of the charge resolution analysis.