[AR] Re: LEO radiation shielding

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2019 16:35:09 -0500 (EST)

On Thu, 5 Dec 2019, Pax L wrote:

I think the duration for most of the lunar and mars missions have been
pretty short as well.

Not really -- planetary missions can last many years. (There are a few that inherently have short lives because of environmental issues.)

NASA may do a but more there in electronics design and fault handling, but still I don't think you see much physical shielding.

They make very heavy use of rad-hard parts, and so have to resort to major shielding only in extreme cases, like Jupiter orbiters (Jupiter's Van Allen belts are really nasty -- the Galileo orbiter's CCD imager was buried in a block of tantalum, looking out through a thick glass slab).

Henry

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