Modeling the space environment and its effects on spacecraft and astronauts using SPENVIS

Abstract

The space environment (i.e. cosmic rays, radiation belts, solar energetic particles, plasmas, outgassing and micro-particles) poses many threats to spacecraft and astronauts. The Space Environment Information System (SPENVIS) is a web application that provides models and tools to space engineers and scientists to model the space environment around Mercury, Earth, Mars and Jupiter but also in the interplanetary medium. In addition, it allows the users to combine and chain results between different models enabling them to calculate the potential effects of the environments specific for their (planned) mission. The effects are divided in the following categories: ionizing dose, non-ionizing energy loss, radiation damage in solar cells, single event upsets, spacecraft charging, atomic oxygen erosion, and meteoroid and debris models. Since SPENVIS’ introduction in 1996, the informatics technology has evolved considerably. In the last part of this paper, SPENVIS Next Generation is presented. The framework has been reviewed, restructured and reengineered using current web design techniques and programming methodologies, providing a new, extensible and distributed framework for the integration of current and future space environment models.