The ability of COS-B to measure gamma-ray bursts

The COS-B satellite for gamma-ray astronomy, launched on 7 August, 1975, features as part of the main instrument a 1.1 m2, 10 mm thick, plastic scintillator for the vetoing of charged particle events. This detector which has an average effective area of 360 cm2 for gamma rays in the interval 0.1 to 1 MeV has been instrumented to detect and record the temporal structure of cosmic gamma ray bursts.