Large Area Scintillation counter Experiment.

LASE instrument is a large area low cost scintillation detector using back-to-back configuration. This instrument is designed to study short time variations in the intensity of X-ray sources in the energy region above 20 keV and look for quasi-periodic phenomena (QPO) in hard X-rays. New features included in the payload are microprocessor controlled telemetry encoder and star tracking systems and PCB modular electronics.

The first balloon flight of the payload was done on Nov. 6th at 0540 hrs. The flight failed due bursting of the balloon at a height of 10 km and hence no useful data was obtained.

The first successful flight for the LASE payload was made on April 19th at 2230 hrs. Balloon reached the ceiling altitude of 38.5 km. Being the maiden flight first 3 hours were spent on the engineering tests. Scientific data could only be obtained for two source GX 1+4 and Sco X-1, due to premature Telemetry Link failure. The data analysis is in progress.