ИСТИНА

It is commonly known, that cosmic radiation generates negative impact on the human body during space flight. The structure of the radiation fields in the near-Earth space was studied during intensive research of recent decades. Huge number of dosimetry studies was conducted on manned and unmanned space vehicles in order to solve the problem of radiation safety humans during space flights. It should be noted that most of the measurements was made onboard the spacecrafts, flying along the orbits with inclination of up to 51.6 degrees. Due to the prospect of manned missions at the orbits with larger inclination it seems advisable to conduct preliminary detailed dosimetry measurements at high-altitude orbit, for which the "Lomonosov" satellite provides good opportunities. We chose a method of cosmic radiation dosimetry based on semiconductor detectors. Proposed in the late 70's this method is widely used onboard spacecraft, including full-time radiation monitoring onboard the ISS. Recently it has been improved, providing an opportunity to register not only the absorbed dose of charged particles radiation, but also range of their ionization losses. It allowed assessment of equivalent dose. Appropriate procedure based on using of a telescope consisting of two semiconductor detectors provided a basis of the developed unit. It should be noted that not only the charged particles contribute significantly in the equivalent dose, but also neutrons do. Semiconductor detectors have low sensitivity to neutron radiation and are not sufficient for detecting the expected flux of neutrons. It was therefore decided to add thermal neutrons counter to the developed device in order to provide an opportunity of estimation of neutron flux variations along the satellite trajectory. A gas-discharge counter SI-13N, operated in a mode of corona discharge was chosen as a neutron detector. This method of neutron detection is well-proven and used many times in SINP experiments. Thus, the appearance of the instrument DEPRON (Dosimeter of Electrons, PROtons and Neutrons) was determined. DEPRON is intended for registration of the absorbed doses and linear energy transfer spectra for high-energy electrons, protons and nuclei of space radiation, as well as registration of thermal and slow neutrons. The experiment based on DEPRON instrument is aimed at the studies of the distribution of space radiation dose rate at high latitude paths in order to study the flight paths of perspective manned spacecraft. Present paper provides a brief description of the DEPRON instrument, its calibration results and the structure of the output data.