The LIDAL experiment on board the ISS

The detailed measurement of radiation environments in space habitats is one of the mandatory steps for optimal countermeasures development to enable long term human space exploration. LIDAL (Light Ion Detector for ALTEA) aims at studying the radiation environment in the International Space Station (ISS) during the evolution of the solar cycle, permitting: i) detailed assessment of the radiation environment in the ISS; ii) transport Models validation; iii) study of the effects of Solar Particle Events in a space habitat and identification of possible countermeasures. LIDAL is a detector based on scintillators for fast time applications, designed to work paired with three Silicon Detector Units (SDU) that already flew in the ISS as part of the ALTEA detector. This improvement allows i) to extend the ALTEA detection capability for the lower Z-part of the radiation spectrum onboard the ISS and ii) to enhance particle discrimination using a stack of three of the ALTEA particle telescopes and through the measurements of the Time of Flight of the detected ions. The triggering capabilities of scintillators permit to extend the measurement range to all passing through protons and Helium ions, completing the charge acceptance of the detector. Time of Flight (TOF) measurements is a needed information to measure the kinetic energy of the passing-through particle: the possibility to match such data to the dE/dx measured by ALTEA will help to discriminate the different elemental species. A NASA small radiation detector (Radiation Environment Monitor) has been recently positioned on LIDAL so to measure the same radiation flux and to allow cross calibration. Copyright © 2021 by the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). All rights reserved