Effective dose measured with a life size human phantom in a low Earth orbit mission.

The biggest concern about the health risk to astronauts is how large the stochastic effects (cancers and hereditary effects) of space radiation could be. The practical goal is to determine the "effective dose" precisely, which is difficult for each crew because of the complex transport processes of energetic secondary particles. The author and his colleagues thus attempted to measure an effective dose in space using a life-size human phantom torso in the STS-91 Shuttle-Mir mission, which flew at nearly the same orbit as that of the International Space Station (ISS). The effective dose for about 10-days flight was 4.1 mSv, which is about 90% of the dose equivalent (H) at the skin; the lowest H values were seen in deep, radiation-sensitive organs/tissues such as the bone marrow and colon. Succeeding measurements and model calculations show that the organ dose equivalents and effective dose in the low Earth orbit mission are highly consistent, despite the different dosimetry methodologies used to determine them.