The Sileye—Alteino experiment on board the International Space Station

Measurements of heavy-ion anisotropy and dose rates in the Russian section of the International Space Station with the Sileye-3/Alteino detector

“…The Alteino particle detector [15,16] consists of eight silicon strip detector planes, each with a thickness of 380 μm. Each plane is 8 by 8 cm 2 with a strip pitch of 2.5 mm, totalling 32 strips per plane.…”

Observations of the Light Flash phenomenon in space

“…LF were first observed on a beam of 3 MeV neutrons (Fremlin, 1970) and subsequently with 14 MeV neutrons (Charman et al, 1971) (but not with 3 MeV neutrons in the same experimental conditions) and 300 MeV neutrons (but not with 1.5 GeV/c pions), suggesting that the production of knock-on protons could be involved in this effect. Tests on cosmic muons resulted in observation (DÕArcy and Porter, 1962;Charman and Rowlands, 1972) of the phenomenon, clearly observed on a 6 GeV muon beam (McNulty, 1971). Another 7 MeV muon experiment reported the observation of LF with a dark center , subsequently observed in space on Apollo (Pinsky et al, 1974) and proposing the generation of Cherenkov radiation emission in the eye as the process involved.…”

“…They consist in an helmet which contains a cosmic ray silicon tracking detector: the astronaut wears the helmet (with a light shielding mask), undergoes a period of dark adaptation and pushes a button when he observes a LF. In parallel the silicon detector (Bidoli et al, 2001Casolino et al, 2002) measures cosmic rays above 40 MeV/n from protons to Iron. Results of the observations are resumed in Table 1 and compared with previous observations: it is possible to see how LF perception on board Mir is lower than that observed on previous experiments (0.13 LF/min).…”

“…Due to the lower cross-section, the role of protons is ''visible'' only in the Anomaly. 5 With the (1998-1999) 19 13.5 ± 8 1050 145 0.13 ± 0.01 >0.81 300-400 (Avdeev et al, 2002;Casolino et al, 2003) Sileye-1 tot. (1995)(1996) amount of statistic and the pointing accuracy of the detector it is unfortunately not possible to identify the region of the visual system where LF take place in order to see if these are different for the proton and the ion component.…”

Evoked bioelectrical brain activity following exposure to ionizing radiation

“…Results of earlier researches conducted at the international space station «Mir» suggest that both heavy nuclei and protons trigger abnormal CNS reactions [98]. As indicated above, start ing with a dose of 300 mSv [90] radiation expo зокрема зниження об'єму короткотривалої пам'яті, погіршення моторних функцій, зміни поведінки, що можуть вплинути на працездатність і здоров'я люди ни.…”