Development of an automatic system for precisely analyzing massive data in track detectors and its application to Space Station or long-duration balloon experiments

When the ECCO project was proposed by A. Westphal, Space Science Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, our Japanese group decided to collaborate with the project and contribute to the precise analysis of massive nuclear track data. In the ECCO experiment, the exposed area of the track detectors was extremely large (∼23m2). Accordingly, we needed to scan all etched tracks in the large exposed area. To achieve such a scanning capability in a short span of time, we have developed an automatic system for precisely analyzing massive data in nuclear track detectors such as CR-39 and BP-1, as well as measurements of their mass-identification powers, for four years since 2001. In this paper, the present status of the developed techniques and their future prospect will be presented.