• Journal of Photoscience
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• 제9권3호
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• pp.37-40
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• 2002

Astronauts are constantly exposed to space radiation at a low-dose rate during long-tenn stays in space. Therefore, it is important to determine correctly the biological effects of space radiation on human health. Space radiations contain various kinds of different energy particles, especially high linear energy transfer (LET) particles. Therefore, we have to study the relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of space radiation under microgravity environment which may change RBE from a stress for cells. Furthermore, the research about space radiation might give us useful information about birth and evolution of life on the earth. We also can realize the importance of preventing the ozone layer from depletion by use of exposure equipment to sunlight at International Space Station (ISS).

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제27권1호
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• pp.43-54
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• 2010

This study was performed by the policy research project of Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs, which title is "Developing safety standards and management of space radiation on the polar route". In this research, total six experiments were performed using Korean commercial flights (B747). Three of those are on the polar route and the other three are on the north pacific route. Space radiation exposure measured on the polar route is the average 84.7 uSv. The simulation result using CARI-6M program gives 84.9 uSv, which is very similar to measured value. For the departure flight using the north pacific route, the measured space radiation is the average 74.4 uSv. It seems that is not so different to use the polar route or not for the return flight because the higher latitude effect causing the increase of space radiation is compensated by the shortened flight time effect causing decreasing space radiation exposure.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제37권4호
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• pp.229-236
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• 2020

There has been increasing necessity of more precise prediction and measurements of aviation radiation in Korea. For our air crew and passengers' radiation safety, we develop our own radiation prediction model of KREAM. In this paper, we validate the KREAM model based on comparison with Liulin observations. During early three months of this year, we perform total 25 experiments to measure aviation radiation exposure using Liulin-6K in commercial flights. We found that KREAM's result is very well consistent with Liulin observation in general. NAIRAS shows mostly higher results than Liulin observation, while CARI-6M shows generally lower results than the observations. The percent error of KREAM compared with Liulin observation is 10.95%. In contrast, the error for NAIRAS is 43.38% and 22.03% for CARI-6M. We found that the increase of the altitude might cause sudden increase in radiation exposure, especially for the polar route. As more comprehensive and complete analysis is required to validate KREAM's reliability to use for the public service, we plan to expand these radiation measurements with Liulin and Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC) in the near future.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제39권2호
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• pp.51-57
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• 2022

Cosmic radiation exposure of the flight crews in Korea has been managed by Radiation Safety Management around Living Life Act under Nuclear Safety and Security Commission. However, the domestic flight crews are excluded from the Act because of relatively low route dose exposure compared to that of international flight crews. But we found that the accumulated total annual dose of domestic flight crews is far from negligible because of relatively long total flight time and too many flights. In this study, to suggest the necessity of management of domestic flight crews' radiation exposure, we statistically analyzed domestic flight crew's accumulative annual dose by using cosmic radiation estimation models of the Civil Aviation Research Institute (CARI)-6M, Nowcast of Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation for Aviation Safety (NAIRAS), and Korean Radiation Exposure Assessment Model (KREAM) and compared with in-situ measurements of Liulin-6K LET spectrometer. As a result, the average exposure dose of domestic flight crews was found to be 0.5-0.8 mSv. We also expect that our result might provide the basis to include the domestic flight crews as radiation workers, not just international flight attendants.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제37권4호
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• pp.249-255
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• 2020

We develop the tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC) type's space radiation dosimeter to measure in-situ aviation radiation. That was originally developed as a payload of small satellite in the low-earth orbit. This dosimeter is based on a TEPC. It is made of an A-150 tissue-equivalent plastic shell of an internal diameter of 6 cm and a thickness of 0.3 cm. TEPC is filled with pure propane at 13.9 torrs to simulate a cell diameter of 2 ㎛. And the associated portable and low power electronics are also implemented. The verification experiments have been performed by the calibration experiments at ground level and compared with Liulin observation at aircraft altitude during the flight between Incheon airport (ICN) and John F. Kennedy airport (JFK). We found that the TEPC dosimeter can be used as a monitor for space radiation dosimeter at aviation altitude based on the verification with Liulin observation.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제32권2호
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• pp.145-149
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• 2015

A newly designed Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC) has been developed for the CubeSat mission, SIGMA (Scientific cubesat with Instruments for Global Magnetic field and rAdiation) to investigate space radiation. In order to test the performance of the TEPC, we have performed heavy ion beam experiments with the Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC), Japan. In space, human cells can be exposed to complex radiation sources, such as X-ray, Gamma ray, energetic electrons, protons, neutrons and heavy charged particles in a huge range of energies. These generate much a larger range of Linear Energy Transfer (LET) than on the ground and cause unexpected effects on human cells. In order to measure a large range of LET, from 0.3 to $1,000keV/{\mu}m$, we developed a compact TEPC which measures ionized particles produced by collisions between radiation sources and tissue equivalent materials in the detector. By measuring LET spectra, we can easily derive the equivalent dose from the complicated space radiation field. In this HIMAC experiment, we successfully obtained the linearity response for the TEPC with Fe 500 MeV/u and C 290 MeV/u beams and demonstrated the performance of the active radiation detector.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.39-44
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• 2015

It is well known that the space radiation dose over the polar route should be carefully considered especially when the space weather shows sudden disturbances such as CME and flares. The National Meteorological Satellite Center (NMSC) and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) recently established a basis for a space radiation service for the public by developing a space radiation prediction model and heliocentric potential (HCP) prediction model. The HCP value is used as a critical input value of the CARI-6 and CARI-6M programs, which estimate the aviation route dose. The CARI-6/6M is the most widely used and confidential program that is officially provided by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The HCP value is given one month late in the FAA official webpage, making it difficult to obtain real-time information on the aviation route dose. In order to overcome this limitation regarding time delay, we developed a HCP prediction model based on the sunspot number variation. In this paper, we focus on the purpose and process of our HCP prediction model development. Finally, we find the highest correlation coefficient of 0.9 between the monthly sunspot number and the HCP value with an eight month time shift.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제40권2호
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• pp.59-66
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• 2023

Since the World Health Organization (WHO) officially announced a global pandemic on March 12, 2020, the aviation industry in the world has been experiencing difficulties for a long time. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war broke out in February, and from March 15, domestic airlines must operate air routes bypassing Russian airspace despite the longer flight time. Therefore, as the flight time increases, the cosmic radiation exposure dose of the crew members is also expected to increase. Here we compare the radiation exposure dose between the route doses for the eastern United States and Europe before and after the detour route usage. Through the comparison analysis, we tried to understand how cosmic radiation changes depending on the flight time and the latitude and which one contributes more. We expect that this study can be used for the policy update for the safety management of cosmic radiation for aircrews in Korea.

• 한국위성정보통신학회논문지
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.23-30
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• 2013

본 연구는 "극항로 우주방사선 예보 모델 개발을 위한 사전연구"로서 2013년부터 본격적으로 개발하게 될 기상청의 극항로 우주방사선 예보 모델의 개발 방안 마련을 위한 사전 조사에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 자료 조사는 주로 항공기 운항과 우주기상 관련 문헌 및 법령 조사, 국내 항공사들의 우주기상 관련 운영지침 및 실태 조사를 통해서 이루어졌다. 또한 주요 선진국들이 현재 사용하고 있는 우주 방사선 계산 프로그램들의 장단점을 파악하고 개선할 수 있는 가능성을 찾는데 주력하였다. 조사 결과 국내에서는 아직 극항로 우주방사선을 예보하는 독자적인 모델이 전무한 상황으로 극항로 우주방사선 예보 모델의 국내 개발의 필요성이 절실함을 파악하였다. 현재 주요 선진국에서 사용하고 있는 대부분의 우주방사선 계산 프로그램들이 태양활동 및 우주기상의 변화를 제대로 반영하지 못하고 있다는 사실도 파악하였다. 본 연구에서는 현재 일반적으로 널리 사용되고 있는 우주방사선 계산 프로그램들의 장단점을 비교 분석하였다. 최종적으로 현재의 우주방사선 계산 모델들이 반영하지 못한 실시간 우주기상 효과를 반영하고, 보다 정밀한 우주방사선 예보 모델을 개발하고자 하는 목적으로 다음의 4가지 방안을 최종 제시하였다. (1) 우주방사선 예보 모델의 기반이 될 지상 방사선량 계산 프로그램의 후보 선정, (2) 항공기 고도에서 적용 가능한 정밀한 대기 모델 개선 및 결정, (3) 지상 방사선량 계산 프로그램과 항공기 고도에서의 대기 모델과 결합, (4) 최종적으로 결합된 우주방사사선 모델에 우주기상 예보 정보 반영.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.25-31
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• 2014

There has been a rapid increase of the concern on the space radiation effect on pilots, crew and passengers at the commercial aircraft altitude (~ 10 km) recently. It is because domestic airline companies, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines have just begun operating the polar routes over the North Pole since 2006 and 2009 respectively. CARI-6 and CARI-6M are commonly used space radiation estimation programs which are provided officially by the U.S. federal aviation administration (FAA). In this paper, the route doses and the annual radiation doses for Korean pilots and cabin crew were estimated by using CARI-6M based on 2012 flight records. Also the modeling concept was developed for our own space radiation estimation program which is composed of GEANT4 and NRLMSIS00 models. The GEANT4 model is used to trace the incident particle transports in the atmosphere and the NRLMSIS00 model is used to get the background atmospheric densities of various neutral atoms at the aircraft altitude. Also presented are the results of simple integration tests of those models and the plan to include the space weather variations through the solar proton event (SPE) prediction model such as UMASEP and the galactic cosmic ray (GCR) prediction model such as Badhwar-O'Neill 2010.