Astrophysics and Technical Study of a Solar Neutrino Spacecraft (NASA 2018-Phase-1. NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) Grant.)

Abstract: We report on our study of the design of a neutrino detector, shielding and veto array needed to operate a neutrino detector in space close to the Sun. This study also took into account the expected rates of Galactic gamma and cosmic rays in addition to the particles from the Sun.These preliminary studies show that we can devise a detector such that a small signal of neutrino interactions can be extracted from a large random number of events from the background sources using a double timing me…