The High-Energy Space Environment branch designed, built, and recently (March 2023) deployed Glowbug, a gamma-ray burst (GRB) experiment on the International Space Station. Glowbug has similar effective area to the Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, and is implementing a new, spatially coherent burst detection algorithm that makes it extremely sensitive to short GRBs that are expected counterparts to gravitational wave events.

Construction has begun on StarBurst, a free-flying instrument with 3x the effective area of the Fermi GBM. StarBurst heavily leverages the technology developed for Glowbug to facilitate rapid development and early launch. With its sensitivity, it will play a crucial role in extending the reach for electromagnetic signatures of neutron star mergers detected by next-generation gravitational wave observatories.

We invite applicants interested in both instrumentation and gamma-ray burst science to work on all aspects of the Glowbug and StarBurst projects, e.g.: validating algorithms with on-orbit data; analyzing and publishing the light curves and spectra of unique GRBs; Glowbug analysis of gravitational wave events;  radiation transport computations for understanding the instrument response.