Enhanced GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulations of the space radiation effects on the International Space Station and Apollo missions using high-performance computing environment

Abstract

A significant challenge to current and future manned and/or unmanned space missions is due to deep space radiation. An improvement in more realistic (more accurate) simulation models in predicting the effects of radiation within the spacecraft is required, especially to better predict dose to astronauts, energy deposition within sensitive electronics, and effectiveness of radiation shielding for long-term space missions. The International Space Station provides an invaluable resource for long-term measurements of the radiation environment in Low Earth Orbit (LEO); however, the only manned missions with dosimetry data available beyond LEO are the Apollo missions. Thus the physiological effects and dosimetry for deep space missions are not well understood in planning extended missions. GEANT4, a Monte Carlo method, represents a powerful physics simulation tool to assess the effects of radiation transport through spacecraft. The newest version of GEANT4 supports multithreading and Message Passing Interface (MPI) allowing for much faster distributive processing of simulations, using a high-performance computing environment. This paper introduces a new simulation model and application using GEANT4 that greatly reduces computational time to hours instead of weeks without any post simulation processing based on high-performance computing. This paper also introduces a new set of GEANT4 computational detectors for calculating dose distribution, besides the historically used International Commission of Radiation Units simulation spheres. The computational detectors include a thermoluminescent detector, tissue equivalent proportional counter, and human phantom, along with additional new scorers to calculate dose equivalence based on the International Commission of Radiation Protection standards. This study presents GEANT4 simulations of the dose deposition for the International Space Station and the Apollo 11 and 14 missions, which replicate well the dose measurements during these missions. The simulations of both Apollo missions show consistent doses from galactic cosmic rays and radiation belts with a small variation in dose distribution across the Apollo capsule. The greatest contributor to radiation dose for both Apollo missions in the simulations came from galactic cosmic rays. Simulations of historical solar particle events during an Apollo missions show a solar particle event would not be fatal and below mission limits. These GEANT4 models also provides the values of the dose deposition and dose equivalent for various organs within a human phantom in the International Space Station and Apollo command module, which are developed for the first time using this GEANT4 based application.