Detection of primary and secondary cosmic ray particles aboard the ISS using SSNTD stacks

To study the radiation environment inside the International Space Station, solid state nuclear track detector stacks were used. Within the BRADOS experiments, Phase 1, seven stacks were exposed at different locations of the Russian segment ‘Zvezda’ for 248 days in 2001. It was supposed that the radiation field inside the ISS was composed from primary cosmic ray particles penetrating the wall of the ISS and secondaries, mainly neutrons induced by primaries in the wall and other structural materials surrounding the detectors. Based on the calibration made by utilising the high energy neutron reference field CERF at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland), the tracks induced by neutrons were separated from those induced by primary particles. Thus, the stacks, on one hand, provided the secondary neutron ambient dose equivalent. On the other hand, from the analysis of the rest of the tracks, the linear energy transfer spectra were computed and the flux and the dose of the primary particles were determined as shown in this paper.