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BLOG OF THE WIFE OF COSMONAUT OLEG NOVITSKY

MAY 17, 2017

05/17/2017 15:33

Recently, all the world's media wrote about how a seventeen-year-old British schoolboy Miles Soloman found an error in NASA's data on the level of
radiation on the ISS, which led to a distortion of the data. The guy found an error while working on the TimPix project, which allows British
schoolchildren to receive data on the radiation level on the ISS. He noticed that, where there should not be radiation, the sensors actually showed -1.
At first the schoolboy, in his own words, thought that there can not be negative energy. And then I realized that this was a mistake. When the boy
reported an error he found to NASA, he was told that agency specialists knew about it, but believed that the data failure occurs once or twice a year.
Soloman also managed to prove that failures occur several times a day.

A lot is said about the problem of protection from radiation in space flights. By the way, I recently read that when flying on an ordinary plane at an
altitude of only 10 - 12 km, the radiation level rises tenfold. Can you imagine ?! And beyond the atmosphere, for example, the ISS already has to use
special radiation protection.

Chris Hadfield wrote in his book "Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth": "We worked with a Canadian experimental device to find and measure the level
of neutron radiation in different parts of the ISS. The scanner analyzed the tubes and determined which of the ISS modules the radiation level was
elevated. (It turned out that some modules are better protected than others, although until the end it is not clear how serious this problem is and
what the health consequences of astronauts may be in the long term). "

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Each astronaut must wear an individual dosimeter throughout the flight. During the flight this device accumulates the radiation that they receive.
When cosmonauts land, experts determine this very dose. There is such a thing as the total maximum dose. For a flight lasting about six months, this
value is about one tenth of the value that an astronaut can get during his entire career.

Today, space expeditions work in orbit on average for six months. And scientists, naturally, are
interested in how many organs receive radiation during the flight. I have already talked a little
about the experiment "Matryoshka-R" on board for these purposes. So, as far as I know, many years
of research have shown that different organs receive different doses of radiation during the flight.
And it depends on how deep the organ is. Those. Radiation decreases from the surface of the
human skin to internal organs. In addition, data have been obtained that, as the distance from the
skin to the interior of the station modules, the radiation level also decreases severalfold.

Of course, some means of protection from radiation exist. One of the individual radiation
protection devices on the ISS installed in the cabin is called "protective curtain". It is an assembly
inside which napkins are installed. Yes, those wet napkins that are used by the crew as a means of
personal hygiene. I was very surprised when I found out about it. It turns out that packaging and
impregnation are made of materials containing molecules of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen, which
effectively weaken cosmic radiation.

Our scientists are sure that such a curtain is able to reduce the negative effect of radiation on the
health of astronauts. The effectiveness of radiation absorption is about forty percent. And the
maximum absorption is achieved in the center of the curtain, and towards the edges decreases.

In addition to individual dosimeters, which cosmonauts always carry with them, there is another
dosimeter on the ISS called Pille-MKS. His cosmonauts use during the spacewalk. Immediately

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before the output, the dosimeter readings are reset to zero. This is done in order to determine, upon
completion of work in outer space, the dose of radiation that the cosmonaut received. Incidentally,
the radiation dose received by astronauts in flares on the Sun is determined using the same method.

Cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy
With the experimental apparatus "Matreshka-R"
everything will continue to be regular!
But on the ISS there are not only individual dosimeters. In addition to them, there is a radiation
monitoring system, all components of which are housed in the service module: in the working
compartment and in the cosmonaut's cabins. This system works around the clock, and all information
is sent to the PCO. Thanks to this, specialists are always aware of the radiation situation on the ISS.
This system can give a warning signal: "Check the radiation!". If this happens, the cosmonauts on the
alarm panel of the systems will see how the corresponding inscription lights up, and they will hear a
sound signal. Fortunately, for the entire operation of the ISS this was not (fie-fie-fie). God grant that

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