Speaker
Description
This talk discusses recent measurements of space radiation made with Timepix hybrid pixel detectors on the private "Polaris Dawn" mission. Polaris Dawn was a 5 day privately funded mission that flew the highest crewed orbit since the Apollo program. During this time it performed several large passes of the Earths Van Allen belts. As radiation is a key hazard of human spaceflight a Timepix based "HERA" detector was flown to analyze the radiation environment in the capsule throughout the mission. This talk presents an overview of the space radiation environment on Polaris Dawn, how Timepix pixel detectors are used for space radiation measurement and how the HERA detector was adapted from hardware originally designed for NASA's Orion spacecraft to the SpaceX crew dragon. It discusses the measurement results including data uniquely enabled by the pixellated nature of the Timepix detector such as angular distributions during belt passes and true dE/dx spectra. Ultimately the measured exposure over the 5 day flight was 8 mSv, approximately equivalent to a 20 day International Space Station stay. Finally we discuss other applications for this data, such as in biological experiments. An example of this is given with application to measurements of radiation induced light flashes by a crew member on Polaris Dawn.
| Workshop topics | Applications |
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