Performance of a BGO detector in low earth orbit

A 7.6-cm x 7.6-cm BGO (bismuth germanate) detector was flown in the middeck of the Space Shuttle Columbia on August 8-13, 1989, as part of the Shuttle Activation Monitor (SAM) experiment. One of the goals of this experiment was to compare the performance of the BGO to that of NaI in the same environment. Twenty-four hours of data in 5-min time bins were recorded with each detector in each of two locations in a high-inclination orbit (57 deg, 300 km). Pre- and post-flight low-background counting was performed for identification of activities induced by the space radiation environment. A number of isotopes attributed to induced activity from exposure to the space radiation environment have been tentatively identified. (I.E.)