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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
J. M. Bauer, V. Bharadwaj, H. Brogonia, M. Brugger, M. Kerimbaev, J. C. Liu, S. Mallows, A. A. Prinz, S. Roesler, S. H. Rokni, T. Sanami, M. Santana-Leitner, J. Sheppard, H. Vincke, J. Vollaire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 648-653
Accelerators | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9283
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Samples of different solid materials as well as of water and soil were exposed to the stray radiation field created by a 28.5-GeV electron beam hitting a copper dump. After irradiation, specific activities and residual dose rates were measured at different cooling times from 1 h up to several months. Furthermore, the irradiation experiment was simulated with the FLUKA Monte Carlo code. The calculations included a detailed identification of interaction processes creating the different nuclides. First comparisons of experimental data on specific activities and FLUKA results indicate underestimation by FLUKA at irradiation locations laterally to the target, while the agreement seems reasonable downstream of it. The irradiation experiment, the current status of the data analysis, and a preliminary comparison with FLUKA results are presented.