Mechanical drawing of the CRaTER telescope.  The top is the zenith (deep space) facing side, and the bottom is the nadir (lunar surface) facing side.  The stack consists of pairs of thin and thick detectors on either side of two pieces of Human Tissue Equivalent Plastic (TEP).

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

I am the instrument scientist for the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and a co-Investigator on the instrument.  LRO is the first mission of the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program (RLEP), the first phase of NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration (VSE), and is scheduled for launch in late 2008.  CRaTER—one of six instrument selected for the mission - will measure and characterize the potential biological effects of cosmic radiation on humans.

The goals for CRaTER are to:

 

1. Measure and characterize that aspect of the deep space radiation environment, Linear Energy Transfer (LET) spectra of galactic and solar cosmic rays (particularly above 10 MeV), most critically important to the engineering and modeling communities to assure safe, long-term, human presence in space.

2. Investigate the effects of shielding by measuring LET spectra behind different amounts and types of areal density, including tissue-equivalent plastic.

 

 

Justin C. Kasper

Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

Harlan Spence (Boston University) is the CRaTER Principle Investigator (PI).  Other members of the science team include Larry Kepko, senior research associate in BU's Center for Space Physics; J. Bernard Blake,  director of the Space Sciences Department at the California-based research group, The Aerospace Corporation;  Joseph Mazur, research scientist and laboratory manager at  Aerospace; Justin Kasper, a research scientist in MIT's Center for Space Research; and Lawrence Townsend, a professor of  nuclear engineering at The University of Tennessee in  Knoxville. Team collaborators include Michael Golightly of the  Air Force Research Laboratory in Bedford, Massachusetts and Terrence Onsager of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center in Boulder,  Colorado.

Artist concept of LRO spacecraft.