Wednesday, September 7, 2011

UNH to turn space instrument into dirty bomb finder

By Rodney H. Brown

The University of New Hampshire’s Space Science Center has won a $303,000 federal contract to help develop a portable instrument that can find contraband radioactive material from a safe distance away.

Researchers at the UNH SSC and their partners at Michigan Aerospace Corp. have won the contract from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. The term of the contract is for one year, and according to a release from UNH, the contract calls for the team to have a device — called a Portable Neutron Spectroscope, or NSPECT — capable of a field test by 2012.

The device will be based on a similar instrument originally designed and built at the SSC for space missions studying high-energy neutrons and gamma rays coming from the sun, as well as distant astronomical objects. The lead scientist is James Ryan of the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space, and the Durham-based college’s department of physics.

Ann Arbor-based Michigan Aerospace will handle the support engineering to turn what is a bench-top instrument into a “rugged field-deployable device equipped with a nimble graphical user interface and live video imaging capability,” the release stated.

Also working on detecting neutron emissions from radioactive material is Boston’s Neotron Inc., which has also won funding from the DTRA.

Last October, UNH researchers won a $35.7 million, five-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to continue its ocean-mapping work.