INTEGRAL reloaded: Spacecraft, instruments and ground system

Abstract

The European Space Agency’s INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (ESA/INTEGRAL) was launched aboard a Proton-DM2 rocket on 17 October 2002 at 06:41 CEST, from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. Since then, INTEGRAL has been providing long, uninterrupted observations (up to about 47  h, or 170  ksec, per satellite orbit of 2.7 days) with a large field-of-view (FOV, fully coded: 100 deg${}^2$), millisecond time resolution, keV energy resolution, polarization measurements, as well as additional wavelength coverage at optical wavelengths. This is realized by two main instruments in the 15  keV to 10  MeV energy range, the spectrometer SPI (spectral resolution 3 keV at 1.8  MeV) and the imager IBIS (angular resolution: 12 arcmin FWHM), complemented by X-ray (JEM-X; 3–35  keV) and optical (OMC; Johnson V-band) monitor instruments. All instruments are co-aligned to simultaneously observe the target region. A particle radiation monitor (IREM) measures charged particle fluxes near the spacecraft. The Anti-coincidence subsystems of the main instruments, built to reduce the background, are also very efficient all-sky $\gamma$-ray detectors, which provide virtually omni-directional monitoring above $\sim$75  keV. Besides the long, scheduled observations, INTEGRAL can rapidly (within a couple of hours) re-point and conduct Target of Opportunity (ToO) observations on a large variety of sources.

INTEGRAL observations and their scientific results have been building an impressive legacy: The discovery of currently more than 600 new high-energy sources; the first-ever direct detection of ⁵⁶Ni and ⁵⁶Co radio-active decay lines from a Type Ia supernova; spectroscopy of isotopes from galactic nucleo-synthesis sources; new insights on enigmatic positron annihilation in the Galactic bulge and disk; and pioneering gamma-ray polarization studies. INTEGRAL is also a successful actor in the new multi-messenger astronomy introduced by non-electromagnetic signals from gravitational waves and from neutrinos: INTEGRAL found the first prompt electromagnetic radiation in coincidence with a binary neutron star merger.

Up to now more than 1750 scientific papers based on INTEGRAL data have been published in refereed journals. In this paper, we will give a comprehensive update of the satellite status after more than 18 years of operations in a harsh space environment, and an account of the successful Ground Segment.