Energy spectrum of 50-250 MeV/nucleon iron nuclei inside the MIR space craft

Stacks of CR-39 plastic nuclear track detectors were mounted inside the MIR spacecraft during the EUROMIR95 space mission for a period of 6 months. This long exposure time resulted in a large number of tracks of HZE-particles in the detector foils. All trajectories of stopping iron nuclei could be reconstructed by optimizing the etching conditions so that an automatic track measurement using image analysis techniques was possible. We found 185 stopping iron nuclei and used the énergy-range relation to calculate their energies at the stack surface. The measured spectrum of iron nuclei inside the MIR station is compared to results of model predictions considering the effect of the solar modulation for the mission period, the geomagnetic shielding effect for the MIR orbit and the shielding by material of the spacecraft walls and its instrumentation.