gckaplan@rocket.ssl.berkeley.edu (George Kaplan) (08/11/89)
henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <3929@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@cgdra.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes: >> How much radiation does the shuttle receive in a high-latitude (as in >> the current 'top secret' mission, supposedly) orbit compared to a >> lower-latitude orbit? >It's not very significant at the latitudes the shuttle reaches in a launch >from KSC (which cannot launch to extreme latitudes for range-safety reasons), >unless it gets far enough south to enter the South Atlantic Anomaly. I don't >remember the latitudes of the SAA offhand, so I can't be sure of that. The >SAA is an area where the inner Van Allen belt is unusually close to Earth, >due to asymmetry in the Earth's magnetic field. It's my impression that the SAA extends pretty far north, even to the equator. I work for the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer Project, and we have to worry about the SAA even though our orbit will have a 28.5 deg inclination (the lowest inclination you can get from KSC). We'll have to shut down our detectors in the SAA since the count rate due to the particle flux will be too high. Of course, where you put the boundaries of the SAA is a matter of degree: our detectors are much more sensitive to short term radiation exposure than a human being. George C. Kaplan Internet: gckaplan@sag4.ssl.berkeley.edu Space Sciences Lab UUCP: ...!ucbvax!sag4.ssl!gckaplan University of California (415) 643-8610 Berkeley, CA 94720