First light from Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) instrument onboard ASTROSAT
ASTROSAT is India's first dedicated science space mission which was launched on 28 September 2015. The Large Area X-ray Propositional Counter (LAXPC), designed and developed at TIFR, Mumbai, is one of the major payloads on ASTROSAT. The LAXPC instrument became fully operational on 19 October 2015 for the first time in space. A cluster of three co-aligned identical detectors provides a large area of collection of about 8000 cm2. LAXPC will provide the largest effective area among all the satellite missions flown so far, worldwide, and will remain so for the next 10 years, for X-ray studies in the 3-80 keV energy range. The large detection volume (15 cm depth) filled with xenon gas at ~ 2 atmospheres pressure, results in detection efficiency greater than 50%, above 30 keV.