The guest of this week's faculty colloquium will be prof. Eric Banton from the Oklahoma State University. His lecture "Active Tissue Equivalent Dosimeter (ATED): A Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter for Space and Air Crew Dosimetry" is scheduled on April 17th at 15:30. The lecture takes place in room no. B-115 in the main building at Břehová 7. Refreshments will be available from 15:00.
Lecture Abstract:
The risks from space crew exposure to ionizing radiation are considered one of the top three challenges to long duration human space missions such as exploration missions to Mars and Near Earth Asteroids or the establishment of permanent bases on the surface of the Moon. Similarly, while we have a general understanding of the radiation in the atmosphere and the radiation exposure of air crew is controlled in the EU, details of how the atmospheric radiation environment changes as a function of time, altitude, geomagnetic latitude and other factors are largely lacking. The Radiation Physics Laboratory at Oklahoma State University is developing an low cost, portable tissue equivalent proportional counter (TEPC) called the Active Tissue Equivalent Dosimeter (ATED). ATED is about the size of a shoebox and responds to radiation in much the same way that human tissue does, allowing the instrument to properly measure the amount of energy that ionizing radiation exposure deposits in the bodies of spacecrew and aircrew. We recently successfully tested the ATED aboard the International Space Station (ISS). While operating, ATED successfully sampled the lineal energy spectrum, absorbed dose, and biologically weighted dose equivalent every 30 seconds. In this presentation, I will describe the ATED and present preliminary data from our recent ISS demonstration. We hope to apply the lessons learned from this experiment on a future ISS mission in about a year. We also plan to make ATED available for use aboard other spacecraft, high altitude balloons and especially aboard commercial, military and business aircraft.