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The spectrometer SPI aboard the ESA INTEGRAL satellite, which will be launched in 2002, will study the gamma ray sky in the 20-keV to 8-MeV energy band. It achieves the excellent spectral resolution of about 2 keV for photons of 1 MeV thanks to its 19 germanium detectors. A coded mask imaging technique provides an angular resolution of 2/spl deg/. An active BGO veto shield is used for the definition of the field of view and for background rejection. After integration and testing at CNES in Toulouse, the flight model of SPI recently underwent a one-month prelaunch calibration at the CEA center of Bruyeres le Chatel, using an accelerator for homogeneity measurements and high-activity radioactive sources for imaging performance measurements. This paper presents the scientific goals and the different detector components of SPI and reports on the testing and calibration campaigns. The methods used to achieve good timing alignment using the digital front end electronics are described and the first detector performance and imaging capabilities are presented.

The European Space Agency's International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) will be launched in 2002. One of its two main instruments is the spectrometer SPI. It uses 19 HPGe detectors to observe the sky in the energy range of 20 keV to 8 MeV with a resolution of /spl Delta/E/E/spl ap/0.2%. Directional information is obtained using a coded mask. The expected angular resolution is about 20, The SPI imaging test setup (SPITS) was built at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestische Physik, Germany, to allow experimental verification of the imaging properties of SPI. SPITS consists of a coded hexagonal uniformly redundant array (HURA) mask and two germanium detectors. The mask is built from 63 opaque tungsten-alloy elements. The two hexagonal Ge-detectors are housed in a common aluminum end cap. They are mounted on an XY-table and can be moved to cover the 19 SPI Ge-detector positions. Mask and germanium detectors are made of SPI materials, with the exception of some Be parts, which have been replaced by thinner Al parts to allow experimental verification of the imaging properties of SPI, SPITS consists of a coded HURA mask and two germanium detectors. The mask is built from 63 opaque tungsten-alloy elements. The two hexagonal Ge-detectors are housed in a common aluminum end cap. They are mounted on an XY-table and can be moved to cover the 19 SPI Ge-detector positions. Mask and germanium detectors are made of SPI materials, with the exception of some Be parts, which have been replaced by thinner Al parts. The imaging properties of SPITS are being measured with several radioactive sources at a distance of 9 m from the detector plane. We obtain an angular resolution of about 20 at 1.8 MeV and a point-source location capability of SPITS of 15 arcmin at 1.17 MeV.