Radiation is an ever present hazard in space travel.
And it's one of the few environmental factors that crew will be exposed to
that has a potential long term health impact.
I'm Nick Stoffle.
I'm a physicist and professional engineer, Science
and Operations lead for the LETS payload.
The Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer is a small, low
power radiation detector based on timepix technology developed at CERN.
It's similar to devices that we've flown on ISS
and Artemis. The science we're expecting to get from the LETS
detector is take that information and translate it
from deposited energy in silicon, which is what we measure with the detector,
into a more biologically equivalent value
that we can utilize for crew protection.
One of the key pieces I think, that if we can capture
would be outstanding is getting data from a radiation event,
a solar storm on the moon while crew are not there.
That would be ideal from the standpoint of being able to get the data
without putting crew at risk and then utilizing that data
to prepare for crew protection during the lunar operations.
I started
my career with NASA's the Space Radiation Analysis Group, working with detectors
and training for ISS and shuttle missions.
In addition, this detector that forms the core of the LETS
the timepix technology has been a focus of my work for quite a while.
So being able to see that data from the lunar surface is going to be amazing.
Commercial lunar payload services, NASA and American companies working together.