Design and construction of a microdosimetric detector for the International Space Station (ISS)

Astronauts in the International Space Station experiment high doses of radiation during their 6-months missions. This high radio pollution from the Sun's radiation could cause severe illness and sickness at organs and tissues of the human body. The design of appropriate detectors to simulate human-body tissues (like skin or muscles) can be achieved with appropriate materials that have the same pattern of interaction with the radiation as the human body. Microdosimetric detectors can then measure spectrum and intensity of different types of radiation giving informations on the resulting biological effects. Different types of ionizing radiations are being studied in this thesis accordingly to the same radiation pattern encountered aboard the ISS. Designing and configuration of the electronic of the device has been conducted in the laboratory together with the configuration of the instrument. Exposure of the detector to external radioactive sources has been performed in order to measure the doses of different types of exposures. In this way has been possible to create a detector capable to evaluate doses of radiation experimented in the same way of that of human tissues.