MAGNETO-IONIZATION SPACECRAFT SHIELD FOR INTERPLANETARY TRAVEL: RADIATION ABSORPTION EXPERIMENTS

The conceptual design of our group’s spacecraft shield consists of two gas bubbles at

either pole of the spacecraft. We decided to test a material called Demron to hold the

gaseous mixture that will act as a passive shield. Demron is a material that consists of a

metal suspended on polyethylene fabric. Our experiments consisted of capturing a

radiation absorption spectrum for sheets of Demron at various thicknesses. We used a

single channel analyzer and a scintillation tube to capture the radiation at varying

energies that passed through the Demron. The sources used included Cobalt and Cesium.

We made a more detailed analysis of the absorption at the energies associated with the

photo peaks and X-ray peaks of each radiation source by narrowing the range of measured

energies around each peak. Through the results obtained we were able to discern how

effective the Demron material is at stopping radiation. The goal of the MISSFIT project

is to advance the space exploration frontier by providing essential radiation shielding for

astronauts.