Teach & Explore: Assessing Radiation Exposure for Astronauts on the Inspiration4 Private Spaceflight Mission

Description

Hands-on exercise part of a toolkit introducing upper-secondary students to the hazardous space environment and its potential impact on astronauts. This exercise instructs the student in using the Space Environment Information System (SPENVIS) on-line tool to assess the equivalent dose received by astronauts during the commercial space mission Inspiration4.

Launched on September 16, 2021, 00:03 UTC from Kennedy Space Center, the mission placed the Crew Dragon Resilience capsule into a low Earth orbit (inclination 51.6°, period ~96 minutes). The mission ended on September 18, 2021, 23:07 UTC, when the capsule splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, near Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The exercise was part of the student workshop on space radiation in the frame of the ASGARD@spacepole activity on May 15, 2025.

Credits

  • SPENVIS is a web-based tool developed and operated by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy for the European Space Agency providing an integrated interface to models of the space environment and its effects.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
Trajectory file TXT Open resource
Exercise corrected PDF Open resource
Reports (auxillary) HTML Open resource
Instructions PDF Open resource
TLE data (auxillary) TXT Open resource
Plots (auxillary) PNG Open resource

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