IvmeRad: An Active Personal Wearable Ionizing Radiation Dosimeter and Results From a Human Suborbital Space Flight

IvmeRad is an active personal wearable radiation dosimeter. IvmeRad-S is a modified version of the device that was carried by a Turkish astronaut on a suborbital space flight up to an altitude of 87,548 km on June 8, 2024, with Virgin Galactic. During the flight, which lasted 70 min, radiation exposure of the astronaut was measured and analyzed. In this study, the design and calibration of the Geiger–Müller detector alongside the performance of the integrated device are investigated, and data are presented and compared to Civil Aeromedical Research Institute 7A (CARI-7A), Model for Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation Effect (MAIRE), and QinetiQ Atmospheric Radiation Model (QARM) calculation codes. A comparison of different calculation codes shows different H*(10) ambient equivalent dose rate behavior above 20 km. These differences could be attributed to the high radiation weighting factor of heavy ions and modeling differences of incident ionizing particles. Also, dependencies on detector characteristics and calibration are discussed to compare calculations with measured dose rates.