LET Spectra of Iron Particles on A-150: Model Predictions for the CRaTER Detector

The Lunar Orbiter Mission (LRO) is scheduled to launch at the end of 2008. It will carry different instruments to explore a variety of aspects on the Moon's surface. One of the goals of the LRO is to characterize the lunar radiation environment and its biological impacts on humans. For this purpose a collaboration involving research personnel from Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The University of Tennessee, The Aerospace Corporation, Air Force Research Laboratory, and the NOAA Space Environment Center successfully proposed to develop a sensor system called the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER). CRaTER will be used to examine the Linear Energy Transfer (LET) spectra of solar particle events (SPE) and galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) in Tissue Equivalent Plastic (A-150) material.

In this work we present and compare computational predictions for the LET spectra of normally incident iron particles in the A-150 material using two Monte Carlo transport codes: the 3 dimensional HETC-HEDS, and the 1-dimensional BBFRAG codes. The energies examined will range from 300 MeV/nucleon to 2 GeV/nucleon.