Kick-off of the EU H2020 FETOPEN Program PAN

 On January 21^st and 22^nd scientist and engineers from the Department of Nuclear and Particle Physics (DPNC) of the University of Geneva, the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the University of Perugia of Italy, and the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics of the Czech Technical University in Prague of the Czech Republic, have met in Villa Boninchi in Geneva to the kick-off of the development of a novel space instrument called PAN. 

PAN, which stands for Penetrating particle ANalyzer, is a magnetic spectrometer designed to operate in deep space to precisely measure the flux, composition and arrival direction of highly penetrating particles with energy ranging from 100 MeV/nucleon to 20 GeV/nucleon, filling the current measurement gap in this energy interval. PAN has multidisciplinary applications in astrophysics, solar physics, space weather and space travel. 

The PAN instrument will deploy some of the cutting-edge technologies such as high precision silicon strip detector, active pixel detectors, space qualified electronics and mechanics design developed by the collaborating institutes.

The kick-off meeting marked the start of the development of a demonstrator, Mini.PAN, funded by a 2.6 M€ grant from the European Commission within the H2020 FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) program.

The Space Astroparticle Physics Group at DPNC (Prof. Xin Wu) is the coordinator of the project.