Detectors/Dosemeters of galactic and solar cosmic rays

Different passive multidetector stacks have been developed at the Italian National Agency for Environmental Protection (ANPA-stack), which makes it possible to measure directly ionising radiations, low-energy and high-energy neutrons, and high-energy charged (HZE) particles. The stack consists of several types of passive devices, namely recoil-track and fission-track detectors, bubble detectors, thermoluminescence dosemeters and an electronic personal dosemeter. Most of these detectors have been used on earth for the assessment of the occupational exposure, or in outer space for cosmic ray physics and/or for the assessment of the dose received by astronauts. A great deal of efforts and new developments have been required to make these detectors useful for in-flight measurements. As outcome of these extensive efforts, different new detectors have been developed, which exploit some of the most successful principles of radiation detection, such as the use of avalanche processes to facilitate the registration of nuclear tracks and the use of coincidence-counting to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. On the basis of these new detectors, different systems (generally referred to as ANPA-stack) have been obtained, which have been successfully applied for a variety of different measurements of cosmic ray radiation fields and doses.