NASA SBIR 2009 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc.
44 Hunt Street
Watertown, MA 02472 - 4699
(617) 668-6810

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
James Christian
jchristian@rmdinc.com
44 Hunt St.
Watertown, MA 02472 - 4699
(616) 668-6897

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 4
End: 6

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
Model calculations and risk assessment estimates indicate that secondary neutrons, with energies ranging between 0.5 to >150 MeV, make a significant contribution to the total absorbed dose received by space crews during long duration space missions [1-3]. Advanced scintillation materials, which exhibit radiation type and mass dependent emission times, coupled to SSPM detectors, provide the optimum volume to payload performance and the ability to easily discriminate between the fraction of dose, which results from secondary neutrons, and that which results from exposure to energetic charged particles and background gamma-rays.
The Phase-1 effort successfully characterized the critical components of the proposed dosimeter, specifically, the response of the scintillation material to irradiation by gamma-rays, protons, and neutrons, as well as the performance of the SSPM detector. The Phase-1 modeling studies provide a critical foundation for assessing the anticipated signals in the space radiation environment. The proposed dosimeter would overcome many of the limitations in the current generation of neutron dosimeters, and would provide baseline information on the physics, needed with the information from biological studies, to assess risk in future human-space-exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The primary target market for the fast-neutron dosimeter is NASA missions.
Key missions are NASA missions that involve extended space-time, such as possible Moon and Mars missions.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
. Governmental and private sector space agencies across the globe will have similar needs for dosimeter devices.

. International airlines, especially those investigating space tourism, such as Space X.

. The commercial satellite market is a large and growing market that will be interested in monitoring space radiation.

. Earth bound or terrestrial markets, including hospitals, national laboratories and industrial research, is the largest potential segment. This market does require some changes in the product design.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING (NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.)

Highly-Reconfigurable Optical & Photonic Materials Particle and Fields Photonics Radiation-Hard/Resistant Electronics Ultra-High Density/Low Power