Flight Performance Of The Heat Rigidity Spectrometer

The HEAT (High Energy Antimatter Telescope) instrument was successfully flown by high altitude balloon in May 1994. HEAT combines a new magnet spectrometer, comprised of a two-coil superconducting magnet and precision drift tube hodoscope, with a transition radiation detector and electromagnetic shower counter for particle identification. Flight data are presented which demonstrate that the spectrometer provides a mean maximum detectable rigidity (MDR) of 170 GV for electrons observed during the HEAT flight, sufficient to determine the rigidity of cosmic ray electrons and positrons at energies up to 50 GeV.