R. F. Barry Jr. Seminar: Tony Slaba, NASA Langley Research Center - "Space Radiation Research for Human Space Missions"
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- Date/Time
- 03/17/2016 12:30 PM EST - 1:30 PM EST
- Location
- Engineering & Computational Sciences Building - 2120
- Fee
- Free
- Description
- ABSTRACT: For long duration missions outside the Earth's magnetic field, chronic exposure to galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and acute exposures from solar particle events (SPE) present a serious health risk to astronauts. Possible in-mission and post-mission adverse health effects for astronauts following space radiation exposure may include carcinogenesis, cardiovascular detriment, and cognitive impairment. In order to estimate these risks, NASA develops and uses models that describe the ambient radiation field in space along with interaction and transport models that describe how the ambient field is modified as it passes through shielding and tissue. These tools are then coupled with realistic shielding geometry and epidemiological-based risk models to quantify carcinogenesis risk and other biological outcomes. In this talk, an overview of the radiation environment expected for a Mars mission is given along with a summary of computational tools currently in use to assess exposure levels and risk. Specific attention is given to radiation transport model development which is based on deterministic solutions to the time-independent linear Boltzmann equation. Benchmark comparisons between the deterministic NASA model and various stochastic codes utilizing Monte Carlo methods are presented as well.