Evolving the Medipix2 Technology For Use As An Active Space Radiation Dosimeter

As reported last year, a new solid state detector, known as Medipix, developed by a consortium of academic institutions has been evolved from a technology originally created for use at the LHC at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. This technology is being harnessed for use as an active personal dosimeter for space radiation applications. The pixel based technology embeds the entire required readout electronics for each pixel within the pixel´s 55 micron square footprint. That allows the seamless tiling of multiple arrays of detectors. Ultimate versions may be deployed that are both wireless and self-contained, as well as having a package size comparable to current passive personal dosimeters. Prospect are excellent for building them into spacesuits, which would provide ground-based real-time monitoring of the detailed doses being taken by crew members during such high-risk periods as EVAs. These dosimeters could also be used as active area monitors in a variety of both space and ground-based applications. An advanced version of this technology, known as TimePix, that effectively incorporates a pixel-by-pixel Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) capability has recently become available, and we anticipate that a report of initial accelerator tests of the capability of this version will be reported at the conference, although those results are not available at the time of the submission of this paper.