Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Shielding of spacecraft from solar radiation

The way you shield a spacecraft from solar radiation is to build a series of permanent magnets around the craft. This will allow the craft to be magnetically protected from solar radiation. It is like a magnetosphere. Solar radiation for the most part will go around the magnetic field.

They just need to be far enough apart to allow for an envelope to protect the computer. This is how you protect a spacecraft from solar radiation. I will look for some citations to support this but it is just obvious. Many people have written about this. A good paper is Townsend where several strategies are reviewed.

It is probably best to use permanent magnets, but if you have a nuclear reactor then electro-magnets are better for variable shielding.

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