Overview of the main radiation transport codes

Abstract

Abstract. Accurate predictions of expected radiation dose levels on Mars are often provided by specific radiation transport codes that have been adapted to space conditions. Unsurprisingly, several of the main space agencies and institutions involved in space research and technology tend to work with their own in-house radiation codes. We present the codes that are related to the simulation of the radiation on Mars' surface under different scenarios. All of these codes have similar fields of application, but they differ with respect to several aspects, including the energy range and types of projectiles considered as well as the models of nuclear reactions considered.

Recent Advances and Challenges in Polymer-Based Materials for Space Radiation Shielding

“…Indeed, the main advantage of this method consists of creating numerical statistical solutions using "random" variables (of which the probability distribution is known) for a problem whose solution in closed form does not exist. Globally, deterministic and Monte Carlo methods complement each other and provide accurate results in space applications [58].…”

“…Despite similar applications, these codes differ in aspects such as energy range and types of projectiles considered. A variety of software options can be found in the literature: the High charge (Z) and Energy TRaNsport (HZETRN) code and Online Tool for the Assessment of Radiation in Space (OLTARIS) software used by NASA, the SHIELD code by the Russian Space Agency, the GEometry ANd Tracking (GEANT4) code by ESA, the FLUctuating KAscade (FLUKA) code by the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System (PHITS) code by the Japan Atomic Institute (JAERI), and the Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended (MCNPX) code by Los Alamos National Laboratory [58][59][60].…”

“…The SHIELD code enables the transport of various particles, including nucleons, pions, kaons, anti-nucleons, and muons, along with nuclei having arbitrary proton and mass numbers at energies up to 1 TeV [67]. For charged particles, the code operates from a lower limit of 1 MeV, while for neutrons, it functions from their thermal energy level [58,59,67].…”

“…A novel package is PLANETOCOSMICS, which provides a description of several interesting features of a planetary body, including its geometric shape, the soil, the atmosphere, and the magnetosphere. It is mainly used for Mars, which is the current target of space exploration missions [58,70].…”

Long‐Term Variation of the Galactic Cosmic Ray Radiation Dose Rates

“…Finally, several radiation transport code (RTC), such as GEometry ANd Tracking (GEANT4) (Agostinelli et al, 2003;Allison et al, 2016) (https://geant4.web.cern.ch/), FLUctuating KAscade (FLUKA) (Boehlen et al, 2014;Ferrari et al, 2005) (http://www.fluka.org/fluka.php), Monte Carlo N-Particle (Pelowitz et al, 2011;Werner et al, 2018) (https://mcnpx.lanl.gov/), Particle and Heavy Ion Transport code System (PHITS) (Sato et al, 2018) (https://phits.jaea.go.jp/), and High charge (Z) and Energy Transport code (HZETRN) Wilson et al, 1991Wilson et al, , 2014 have been developed. For more detailed descriptions, please refer to Dietze et al (2013), Schetakis et al (2020), and Zaman et al (2022).…”