ARMAS Flight System for Operational Aerospace Radiation Measurements

In this paper we describe the Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety (ARMAS) operational system that has been developed to produce quality and calibrated absorbed dose measurements for aerospace safety. The ARMAS system is at a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 9 and has collected over a half million one minute data records through 600 missions on vehicles since 2013 at altitudes from 8-90 km on a wide variety of NASA, FAA, and commercial flights as well as high altitude balloons and a commercial suborbital vehicle. The ARMAS radiation measurement flight system uses the Teledyne micro dosimeter (uDOS001) that directly measures total ionizing dose (TID) absorbed by an internal silicon test mass. Radiation measurements performed aboard commercial airline flights are presented and discussed. The ARMAS flight measurements are also compared to the results obtained by a Tissue Equivalent Proportional Counter (TEPC). Experiments at ground based particle accelerator and radiation producing facilities for further comparisons between the ARMAS system and the TEPC response are introduced.