#COSMIC RADIATION FREE#
This will not be the case for trajectories in free space or on the surface of planetary bodies without a magnetic field and/or substantial atmosphere, such as the Moon and Mars. Astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) are protected against high doses from solar energetic protons (SEP) as a result of being shielded by the geomagnetic field for much of its trajectory. Another source of radiation are the protons that are accelerated during a solar particle event (SPE). For long duration missions GCR will be the primary source of stochastic radiation effects resulting in additional risk of exposure induced cancer (REIC). The radiation environment in space is composed mostly of galactic cosmic radiation (GCR), which – modulated by solar activity – provides the overall background radiation environment in free space (FS). This is of particular importance for the currently planned exploration missions to the Moon, near Earth asteroids and in the long term Mars ( Durante & Cucinotta, 2011).
The space radiation environment and its impact on humans have been seen as one of the main challenges for long duration human space missions.
#COSMIC RADIATION LICENSE#
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. At the end we provide a dataset spanning the timeframe for GCR measurements on the ISS (2009–2011 & 2012–2019), Moon (2009–2019) and Mars (2012–2019), thereby covering the time span from the deep minimum of solar cycle 23, the ascending phase and maximum of solar cycle 24, and the descending phase of cycle 24, which is ongoing at the time of this writing. To derive GCR dose contributions on board the ISS two procedures have been developed separating the contributions from GCR from passing’s through the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA), as well as ways to extrapolate the GCR dose measured on board the ISS to free space based on various ranges of the McIlwain L-shell parameter. Within the current work these investigations have been performed applying three datasets generated on board the International Space Station (ISS) with the DOSTEL instruments in the frame of the DOSIS and DOSIS-3D projects, with the CRaTER instrument in a Moon orbit and with the MSL-RAD instrument on the way to and on the surface of Mars.
Investigations of the GCR variations over the course of a solar cycle provide valuable data for exploration mission planning and for the determination of the radiation load received due to the GCR environment. The steady flux of energetic particles in the galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) produces a low dose-rate radiation exposure, which is heavily influenced by several factors including the solar cycle, the presence of an atmosphere, relevant magnetic fields (as on Earth) and of course by the relevant spacecraft shielding. * Corresponding author: radiation environment in free space and the related radiation exposure is seen as one of the main health detriments for future long-duration human exploration missions beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, 80302 CO, USA University of New Hampshire, Durham, 03824 NH, USA German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerospace Medicine, 51147 Cologne, GermanyĬhristian Albrechts University (CAU), 24118 Kiel, Germany Hassler 5, Bent Ehresmann 5 and Robert F.
Thomas Berger 1 *, Daniel Matthiä 1, Sönke Burmeister 2, Cary Zeitlin 3, Ryan Rios 3, Nicholas Stoffle 3, Nathan A.
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