Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Spaceflight radiation carcinogenesis Astronauts are exposed to approximately 50-2,000 millisieverts (mSv) while on six-month-duration missions to the International Space Station (ISS), the Moon and beyond. The risk of cancer caused by ionizing radiation is well documented at radiation doses beginning at 50 mSv and above. Related radiological effect studies have shown that survivors of the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear reactor workers and patients who have undergone therapeutic radiation treatments have received low-linear energy transfer (LET) radiation (x-rays and gamma rays) doses in the same 50-2000 mSv range. While in space, astronauts are exposed to radiation which
Cherenkov radiation Cherenkov radiation Cherenkov radiation (pronunciation: /tʃɛrɛnˈkɔv/) is an electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that medium. It is also known as the Vavilov–Cherenkov radiation (VCR) (named after Sergey Vavilov and Pavel Cherenkov). It is named after the Soviet scientist Pavel Cherenkov, the 1958 Nobel Prize winner who was the first to detect it experimentally. A theory of this effect was later developed within the framework of Einstein's special relativity theory by Igor Tamm and Ilya Frank, who also shared