The nominal radiation environment in low Earth orbit, especially for the International Space Station (ISS), is dominated by two sources. The first is galactic cosmic radiation, which is modulated by the interplanetary and the Earth's magnetic fields, and the second is trapped radiation in the form of the Van Allen belts. The trapped radiation inside the ISS is mostly due to protons of the inner radiation belt. In addition to these sources sporadic solar particle events (SPEs) can produce high doses inside and outside the ISS, depending on the intensity and energy spectrum of the event. Before 2017, the last SPE observed inside the ISS with relevant radiation detectors occurred in May 2012. Even though we are currently approaching the next solar minimum, an SPE was observed in September 2017, which was (a) a ground‐level enhancement, (b) measured with various radiation detector systems onboard the ISS, and (c) observed on the surface of Mars. This paper gives an overview of the 10 September 2017 SPE measured with the DOSIS 3D‐DOSTEL and the ISS‐RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) instruments, both located at this time in close proximity to each other in the Columbus Laboratory of the ISS. The additional dose received during the SPE was 146.2 μGy in Si as measured by ISS‐RAD and 67.8 μGy in Si as measured by the DOSIS 3D‐DOSTEL instruments. In comparison, the dose measured on the surface of Mars with the Mars Science Laboratory‐RAD instrument accounted to 418 μGy in Si.
The radiation environment in space is different, more complex and more intense than on Earth. Conventional devices and detection methods used nowadays do not allow to discriminate single particle types and the energy of the single particles. The Timepix detector is a position sensitive pixelated detector developed at CERN in a frame of the Medipix collaboration that provides capability to visualize tracks and measure energy of single particles. This information can be used for sorting the particles into different categories. It is possible to distinguish light charged particles such as electrons or heavy charged particles such as ions. Moreover, the Linear Energy Transfer (LET) for charged particles can be determined. Each category is assigned a quality factor corresponding to the energy a particle would deposit in the human tissue. By summing the dose of all particles an estimate of the dose rate can be calculated. For space dosimetry purposes a miniature device with the Timepix detector and a custom made integrated USB based readout interface has been constructed. The entire device has dimensions of a USB flash memory stick. The whole compact device is connected to a control PC and is operated continuously. The PC runs a software that controls data acquisition, adjusts the acquisition time adaptively according to the particle rate, analyzes the particle tracks, evaluates the deposited energy and the LET and visualizes in a simple display the estimated dose rate. The performance of the device will be tested during a mission on International Space Station planned towards the beginning of year 2012. KEYWORDS: Data processing methods; Dosimetry concepts and apparatus; Detector control systems (detector and experiment monitoring and slow-control systems, architecture, hardware, algorithms, databases)
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