Acute Radiation Risks Tool (ARRT) Development for the Upcoming Human
Exploration Missions
Abstract
The health risks of space radiation present big challenges to space
exploration, with the possibility of large Energetic Solar Particle
Events (ESPEs) inducing Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS) during upcoming
Artemis missions. An operational software Acute Radiation Risk ToolARRT)
was developed to directly use measurements from onboard dosimeters to
project organ doses during times of increased radiation exposure, so
that any possible ARS risks of the astronauts can be modelled and
monitored in real time using a data stream at the astronaut location. To
enable ARRT to handle variant scenarios of any possible ESPEs in an
automatic manner for mission operation, two datasets were employed in
developing its modules, one involving historical solar protons recorded
over the past four decades, and the other using the real-time telemetry
readings of dosimeters onboard International Space Station (ISS). Though
vastly different in term of data cadence, smoothness, and data gaps, all
events in these datasets can be correctly processed to output organ
doses and ARS risks and generate flight notes for communication within
the Flight Control Team (FCT). All these tasks are completed with close
interactions between multiple modules developed with many
state-of-the-art facilities of full stack web applications. This work
demonstrates that ARRT meets the requirement to project radiation
exposure and to provide clinical guidelines in very short time steps as
the ESPE unfolds, even for the longest event in datasets, making this
tool eligible to be tested during the upcoming unmanned Artemis mission
and utilized in future space exploration.