It has already been 48 years since the announced first flight of astronauts to the Moon, but humanity, who doubts their reality, still asks hundreds of questions, mostly unanswered. Many are interested in how the Americans contrived to resolve the issue of radiation protection in such a way that for half a century this classified technology has not been seen anywhere. NASA thought about Allen's belt for a long time, pondered and finally decided to throw a bone - all 11 flights were carried out with a "favorable green light", through the established corridors safe when moving:
The radiation belt does not seem to be the same, and in different places it has different levels of radiation, right? In addition, if you skip quickly, then a large dose can be avoided. In my amateurish opinion, of course
More recently, in 2014, another video was released, where NASA is still only solving problems with this harmful radiation.
Earth's radiation belt
Another name (usually in Western literature) is the "Van Allen radiation belt".
Inside the magnetosphere, as in any dipole field, there are regions inaccessible to particles with kinetic energy E less critical. The same particles with energy E < E cr, which are already there, cannot leave these areas. These forbidden regions of the magnetosphere are called capture zones. In the capture zones of the Earth's dipole (quasi-dipole) field, significant fluxes of captured particles (primarily protons and electrons) are actually retained.
The Earth's radiation belt (inner) was predicted by Soviet scientists S.N. Vernov and A.E. Chudakov, as well as by the American scientist James van Allen. The existence of the radiation belt was demonstrated by measurements on Sputnik 2, launched in 1957, and also on Explorer 1, launched in 1958. In the first approximation, the radiation belt is a toroid, in which two regions are distinguished:
- inner radiation belt at an altitude of ≈ 4000 km, consisting mainly of protons with energies of tens of MeV;
- outer radiation belt at an altitude of ≈ 17,000 km, consisting mainly of electrons with energies of tens of keV.
The height of the lower boundary of the radiation belt changes at the same geographic latitude in longitudes due to the inclination of the axis of the Earth's magnetic field to the axis of rotation of the Earth, and at the same geographic longitude it changes in latitudes due to the inherent shape of the radiation belt due to different the height of the lines of force of the Earth's magnetic field. For example, over the Atlantic, the increase in radiation intensity begins at an altitude of 500 km, and over Indonesia, at an altitude of 1300 km. If the same graphs are plotted depending on the magnetic induction, then all measurements will fit into one curve, which once again confirms the magnetic nature of particle capture.
There is a gap between the inner and outer radiation belts, located in the interval from 2 to 3 Earth radii. Particle fluxes in the outer belt are greater than in the inner one. The composition of the particles is also different: in the inner belt there are protons and electrons, in the outer one - electrons. The use of unshielded detectors has significantly expanded the knowledge of radiation belts. Electrons and protons with energies of several tens and hundreds of keV, respectively, were found. These particles have a significantly different spatial distribution (compared to penetrating particles).
The maximum intensity of low-energy protons is located at a distance of about 3 radii of the Earth from its center. Low-energy electrons fill the entire capture region. For them, there is no division into inner and outer belts. It is unusual to refer to particles with energies of tens of keV as cosmic rays, but radiation belts are a single phenomenon and should be studied in conjunction with particles of all energies.
The proton flux in the inner belt is fairly stable over time. The first experiments showed that high-energy electrons ( E \u003e 1-5 MeV) are concentrated in the outer belt. Electrons with energies less than 1 MeV fill almost the entire magnetosphere. The inner belt is very stable, while the outer one experiences sharp fluctuations.
Radiation belts of planets
Due to the presence of a strong magnetic field, the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) also have strong radiation belts, reminiscent of the outer radiation belt.
Original taken from sokolov9686 c So were the Americans on the moon? ...
Above 24,000 km above the Earth, radiation kills all life
As already mentioned, as soon as the Americans began their space program, their scientist James Van allen made a rather important discovery. The first American artificial satellite they launched into orbit was much smaller than the Soviet one, but Van Allen thought of attaching a Geiger counter to it. Thus, what was stated at the end of the nineteenth century was officially confirmed. the outstanding scientist Nikola Tesla hypothesized that the Earth is surrounded by a belt of intense radiation.
Photo of Earth by astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission (NASA archive)
Tesla, however, was considered a great eccentric, and academic science even a madman, so his hypotheses about a giant electric charge generated by the Sun had long been lying under the rug, and the term "solar wind" did not cause anything but smiles. But thanks to Van Allen, Tesla's theories were revived. With the suggestion of Van Allen and a number of other researchers, it was found that radiation belts in space begin at 800 km above the Earth's surface and extend up to 24,000 km.Since the radiation level there is more or less constant, the incoming radiation should be approximately equal to the outgoing radiation. Otherwise, it would either accumulate until it “baked” the Earth, like in an oven, or it would dry up. On this occasion, Van Allen wrote:
“The radiation belts can be compared to a leaking vessel that is constantly replenished from the Sun and flows into the atmosphere. A large portion of solar particles overflows the vessel and splashes out, especially in the polar zones, leading to auroras, magnetic storms and other similar phenomena. "
The radiation from the Van Allen belts depends on the solar wind. In addition, they seem to focus or concentrate this radiation in themselves. But since they can concentrate in themselves only that which came directly from the Sun, one more question remains open: how much radiation is in the rest of the cosmos?
NASA | Heliophysics | The satellite has discovered a new radiation belt!
about Van Allen rings 28.30 minutes radiation kills everything
There are a lot of museums in Europe, where the regolith is exposed for free for viewing in rather large pieces. Do not believe me, there are addresses of museums, it is easy to check.
For example, a stone in the Toulouse Cité de l "Espace:
Original taken from toomth at Why is NASA hiding "lunar soil" from the world?
It is believed that the Americans brought 378 kg of lunar soil and rocks from the moon. Anyway, NASA says so. This is almost four centners. It is clear that only astronauts could deliver such an amount of soil: no space stations can do this.
The stones have been photographed, rewritten and are the regular extras of NASA's lunar films. In many of these films, the Apollo 17 astronaut-geologist Dr. Harisson Schmidt acts as an expert and commentator, who allegedly personally collected many such stones on the Moon.
It is logical to expect that with such lunar wealth, America will shake it, demonstrate it in every possible way and to someone, and its main rival will roll off 30-50 kilograms from the bounty. Here, they say, investigate, be convinced of our success ... But with this, for some reason, it does not work. They gave us little soil. But "their" (again, according to NASA) received 45 kg of lunar soil and stones.
True, some particularly corrosive researchers have calculated the corresponding publications of scientific centers and could not find convincing evidence that these 45 kg reached the laboratories of even Western scientists. Moreover, according to them, it turns out that currently in the world from laboratory to laboratory no more than 100 g of American lunar soil wanders, so that usually the researcher received half a gram of rock.
That is, NASA treats the lunar soil like a stingy knight to gold: it keeps the treasured centners in its basements in securely locked chests, giving out only pitiful grams to researchers. The USSR did not escape this fate either.
In our country at that time, the head scientific organization for all studies of the lunar soil was the Institute of Geochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now - GEOKHI RAS). The head of the meteorics department of this institute, Dr. M.A. Nazarov reports: “The Americans transferred to the USSR 29.4 grams (!) Of lunar regolith (in other words, lunar dust) from all Apollo expeditions, and from our collection of Luna-16, 20 and 24 samples were issued abroad 30.2 g ". In fact, the Americans exchanged lunar dust with us, which can be delivered by any automatic station, although the astronauts should have brought weighty boulders, and it is most interesting to look at them.
What is NASA going to do with the rest of the lunar "good"? Oh, this is a "song."
"In the United States, it was decided to keep the bulk of the delivered samples intact until new, more advanced methods of studying them are developed," write competent Soviet authors, from whose pen more than one book on lunar soil came out.
“It is necessary to spend the minimum amount of material, leaving untouched and uncontaminated most of each individual sample for study by future generations of scientists,” - explains the position of NASA American expert J. A. Wood.
Obviously, the American specialist believes that no one will fly to the moon and never - neither now nor in the future. And therefore it is necessary to protect the centners of the lunar soil more than an eye. At the same time, modern scientists have been humiliated: with their devices they can examine every single atom in a substance, but they are denied confidence - they have not grown up. Or snout did not come out. NASA's persistent concern for future scientists is more like it’s a convenient excuse to hide the disappointing fact: there are no moon rocks or quintals of lunar soil in its storerooms.
Another oddity: after the completion of the "lunar" flights, NASA suddenly began to experience an acute shortage of money for their research.
As of 1974, one of the American researchers writes: “A significant part of the samples will be stored as a reserve at the space flight center in Houston. The cut in funding will reduce the number of researchers and slow down the pace of research. "
After spending $ 25 billion to deliver lunar samples, NASA suddenly found that there was no money left to research them ...
The story of the exchange of Soviet and American soil is also interesting. Here is a message from April 14, 1972, the main official publication of the Soviet period - the newspaper Pravda:
“On April 13, representatives of NASA visited the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The transfer of samples of lunar soil from among those delivered to Earth by the Soviet automatic station "Luna-20" took place. At the same time, a sample of lunar soil obtained by the crew of the American Apollo 15 spacecraft was handed over to Soviet scientists. The exchange was made in accordance with the agreement between the USSR Academy of Sciences and NASA, signed in January 1971 ”.
Now you need to go through the deadlines.
July 1969 Apollo 11 astronauts allegedly bring 20 kg of lunar soil. The USSR is not given anything from this amount. By this time, the USSR does not have lunar soil yet.
September 1970 Our Luna-16 station delivers lunar soil to Earth, and from now on Soviet scientists have something to offer in exchange. This puts NASA in a difficult position. But NASA expects that it will be able to automatically deliver its lunar soil to Earth in early 1971, and with this in mind, in January 1971, an exchange agreement was already concluded. But the exchange itself does not take place for another 10 months. Apparently, the US has something wrong with automatic delivery. And the Americans are starting to pull rubber.
July 1971 In good faith, the USSR unilaterally transfers 3 g of soil from Luna-16 to the United States, but does not receive anything from the United States, although the exchange agreement was signed six months ago, and NASA allegedly already contains 96 kg of lunar soil (from “ Apollo 11 "," Apollo 12 "and" Apollo 14 "). Another 9 months pass.
April 1972 Finally NASA hands over a lunar soil sample. It was allegedly delivered by the crew of the American Apollo 15 spacecraft, although 8 months have passed since the Apollo 15 flight (July 1971). By this time, NASA allegedly already had 173 kg of lunar stones (from Apollo 11, Apollo 12, Apollo 14 and Apollo 15) in the storerooms.
Soviet scientists receive from these riches a certain sample, the parameters of which are not reported in the newspaper Pravda. But thanks to Dr. M.A. We know to Nazarov that this sample consisted of regolith and did not exceed 29 g in mass.
It is very likely that the United States had no real lunar soil at all until about July 1972. Apparently, somewhere in the first half of 1972, the Americans had the first grams of real lunar soil, which was automatically delivered from the Moon. It was only then that NASA showed its readiness to make the exchange.
And in recent years, the Americans' lunar soil (more precisely, what they claim to be lunar soil) has begun to disappear altogether. In the summer of 2002, a huge number of samples of lunar material - a safe weighing almost 3 quintals - disappeared from the storerooms of the NASA American Space Center Museum. Johnson in Houston.
Have you ever tried to steal a 300 kg safe from the territory of the space center? And don't try: it's too hard and dangerous work. But the thieves, on whose trail the police came out wonderfully quickly, did it easily. Tiffany Fowler and Ted Roberts, who worked in the building at the time of the disappearance, were arrested by special agents of the FBI and NASA in a restaurant in Florida. Subsequently, in Houston, the third partner, Shae Saur, was taken into custody, and then the fourth participant in the crime, Gordon McVater, who facilitated the transportation of the stolen goods. The thieves intended to sell invaluable evidence of NASA's lunar mission for $ 1000-5000 per gram through the site of the mineralogical club in Antwerp, Holland. The cost of the stolen goods, according to information from overseas, was more than $ 1 million.
A few years later, another misfortune. In the US, in the Virginia Beach area, unknown attackers stole two small sealed plastic boxes in the form of a disk with samples of meteorite and lunar matter from a car, judging by the markings on them. Samples of this kind, according to Space, are being handed over by NASA to special instructors "for training purposes." Before receiving such samples, teachers undergo special instructions, during which they are trained to properly handle this US national treasure. And the "national treasure", it turns out, is so easy to steal ... Although it does not look like a theft, but a staged theft in order to get rid of evidence: no soil - no "inconvenient" questions.
rev. dated 15.10.2014
It is known that there are two radiation belts in the Earth's magnetosphere, which contain charged particles of the solar wind captured by the Earth's magnetic field. They are called the Van Allen Belt.
Although the American Van Allen discovered only the inner belt, and the discoverers of the outer radiation belt were Soviet scientists Vernov and Chudakov. The inner belt is located at an altitude of 3 to 12 thousand km above the Earth's surface, and the outer belt is at an altitude of 18 to 57 thousand km. The inner one consists mainly of protons, while the outer one is made up of electrons. Although the division into inner and outer belts is rather arbitrary, since the entire near-Earth space is filled with charged particles that move in the Earth's magnetic field.
The presence of radiation belts and their characteristics are taken into account when designing satellites, since a long stay of electronic equipment in such conditions is fraught with breakdowns. Radiation belts are also dangerous for the crews of spaceships (however, until now, only the American Apollo ships, heading towards the Moon, passed through the Earth's radiation belts). The so-called safe zone is located between the radiation belts. For almost 40 years now, there has been a debate among scientists about how exactly this safe zone was formed and how the process of its "cleaning" of charged particles occurs. Previously, it was believed that the energy of solar radiation is scattered by radio waves coming directly from the area of \u200b\u200bthe electromagnetic burst arising from a solar storm.
Recent research, funded by the NASA space agency, has produced rather unexpected results. As it turned out, ordinary lightning in the atmosphere is responsible for "clearing" the safe zone several thousand kilometers high, which during thunderstorms sparkle at an altitude of only 3-5 kilometers above the Earth's surface. And in the upper layers they are called blue jet, tigert, sprite and elves.
Lightning is not only a bright flash of light. During lightning, radio waves are also generated.
The path of propagation of these radio waves is bent under the action of an electrically charged gas captured by the Earth's magnetic field, as a result of which the radio waves are directed into the outer space surrounding our planet. In the inner radiation belt, they interact with charged particles, take away part of their energy and change the direction of their movement.
As a result of this interaction, the mirror point, from which charged particles are "reflected" as they move in the Earth's magnetic field from the North Pole to the South Pole and vice versa, descends and finds itself in the Earth's atmosphere. And in the atmosphere, charged particles from the radiation belts collide with atmospheric particles and lose their energy.
So, according to scientists, the "cleaning" of the radiation belt takes place, albeit short-term, but constant (since lightning flashes every day).
To confirm this theory, scientists used a global map of lightning activity made using the Micro Lab 1 scientific satellite. They used data from the Radio Plasma Imager radio camera installed on the IMAGE satellite (Imager for Magnetopause Aurora Global Exploration), Dynamics Explorer. As a result of processing these data, no correlation of radio-magnetic disturbances was found at the moments of the highest solar activity. It turned out that charged particles are distributed and accumulated in the Earth's magnetosphere. Over the course of several days after the magnetic storm, this excess of particles is gradually neutralized by powerful lightning strikes.
The USA had such a project called "Starfish Prime". His tasks included the study of a nuclear explosion in outer space.
On July 9, 1962, from Johnston Atoll, a nuclear warhead with a capacity of 1.45 megatons was fired at an altitude of 400 kilometers using a Thor rocket.
Almost complete absence of air at height 400 km prevented the formation of the usual nuclear fungus. However, other interesting effects were observed with a high-altitude nuclear explosion. Hawaii in the distance 1500 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion under the influence of an electromagnetic pulse, three hundred street lamps, televisions, radios and other electronics were out of order. A glow could be observed in the sky in this region for more than seven minutes. He was observed and filmed from the Samoa Islands located in 3200 kilometers from the epicenter.
The explosion also affected spacecraft. Three satellites were immediately disabled by an electromagnetic pulse. The charged particles that appeared as a result of the explosion were captured by the Earth's magnetosphere, as a result of which their concentration in the Earth's radiation belt increased by 2-3 orders of magnitude. The impact of the radiation belt led to very rapid degradation of solar batteries and electronics in seven more satellites, including the first commercial telecommunications satellite Telstar 1. In total, the explosion disabled a third of the spacecraft in low orbits at the time of the explosion. Nevertheless, for a short time, the concentration of charged particles in the Earth's radiation belt returned to normal again, neutralized by powerful lightning discharges.
In addition, in 1994, UEO announced the discovery of two new unexpected populations of cosmic particles that were unanticipated in the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth:
1. During periods of sudden solar magnetic storms known as Coronal Mass Injections or PCMs, a dense beam of electrons with more energy is injected into the Earth's inner magnetosphere. 50 MeV.
2. A new belt is emerging in the Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth. It contains ions characteristic of the composition of stars.
The beginning of astronautics was marked by a number of discoveries, one of which was the discovery of the Earth's radiation belts. The Earth's inner radiation belt was discovered by the American scientist James van Allen after the Explorer-1 flight. The outer radiation belt of the Earth was discovered by Soviet scientists S.N. Vernov and A.E. Chudakov after the Sputnik-3 flight in 1958.
At some altitudes, the first satellites fell into regions that were densely saturated with charged particles with very high energies, sharply different from previously observed cosmic particles, both primary and secondary. After processing data from satellites, it became clear that we are talking about charged particles captured by the Earth's magnetic field.
It is known that any charged particles, once in a magnetic field, begin to "wind" on the lines of force of the magnetic field, while moving along them. The dimensions of the turns of the resulting spiral depend on the initial speed of the particles, their mass, charge and the strength of the Earth's magnetic field in the region of the near-Earth space into which they flew and changed the direction of motion.
The Earth's magnetic field is not uniform. At the poles, it "thickens" - becomes denser. Therefore, a charged particle that starts spiraling along a magnetic line "saddled" by it from a region close to the equator, as it approaches any pole, experiences more and more resistance until it stops. And then it returns back to the equator and further to the opposite pole, from where it begins to move in the opposite direction. The particle appears to be in a giant "magnetic trap" of the planet.
These regions of the magnetosphere, where high-energy charged particles (mainly protons and electrons) and particles with a kinetic energy E less than critical, which have penetrated into it, are accumulated and retained are called radiation belts. The Earth has three radiation belts, and now a fourth has been discovered. The Earth's radiation belt is a toroid.
The first such belt begins at an altitude of about 500 km above the western and 1500 km above the eastern hemisphere of the Earth. The largest concentration of particles in this belt - its core - is located at an altitude of two to three thousand kilometers. The upper boundary of this belt reaches three to four thousand kilometers above the Earth's surface.
The second belt extends from 10-11 to 40-60 thousand km with a maximum particle density at an altitude of 20 thousand km.
The outer belt begins at an altitude of 60-75 thousand km.
The indicated boundaries of the belts are still only approximately determined and, apparently, change periodically within some limits.
These belts differ from each other in that the first of them, the closest to the Earth, consists of positively charged protons with a very high energy - about 100 Moe. They were able to capture and hold only the densest part of the Earth's magnetic field. The proton flux in it is fairly stable over time and does not experience sharp fluctuations.
The second belt consists mainly of electrons with energies of “only” 30-100 keV. There are larger flows of particles moving in it than in the inner belt, it experiences sharp vibrations.
In the third belt, where the earth's magnetic field is the weakest, particles with an energy of 200 eV or more are held.
In addition, electrons with energies less than 1 MeV fill almost the entire capture region. There is no division into belts for them, they are present in all three belts.
To understand how dangerous charged particles in the radiation belts are for all life on Earth, let us give an example for comparison. So, ordinary X-ray radiation, used for a short time for medical purposes, has an energy of 30-50 keV, and powerful installations for scanning huge ingots and lumps of metal - from 200 keV to 2 MeV. Therefore, the most dangerous for astronauts of the future and for all living things during flights to other planets are the first and second belts.
That is why scientists are now so persistently and carefully trying to clarify the location and shape of these belts, the distribution of particles in them. So far, only one thing is clear. The corridors for the emergence of inhabited spacecraft on the routes to other worlds will be areas close to the magnetic poles of the Earth, free of high-energy particles.
A natural question is: where did all these particles come from? They are mainly thrown out of its depths by our Sun. It has now been established that the Earth, despite its great distance from the Sun, is located in the outermost part of its atmosphere. This, in particular, is confirmed by the fact that each time when solar activity increases, and, consequently, the number and energy of particles emitted by the Sun increases, the number of electrons in the second radiation belt also increases, which, as it were, under the pressure of the "wind" from these particles is pressed against Earth.
The separation of charges into layers and the formation of the Earth's radiation belts occurs under the action of the acousto-magnetoelectric effect, which consists in the fact that the short-wave radiation of the Sun, passing through the plasma across the lines of force of the Earth's magnetic field, sorts the charges according to their energy state to different levels. The presence of a certain number of charges in each layer, including on the surface of the Earth, suggests that the Earth, together with the entire atmosphere, can be considered as an electric machine, which by design can be identified with a spherical multilayer, multi-rotor, asynchronous electric capacitive-inductive machine.
The particles trapped in the Earth's magnetic trap under the action of the Lorentz force make an oscillatory motion along a spiral trajectory along the magnetic field line from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere and back. At the same time, particles make a slower movement (longitudinal drift) around the Earth.
When a particle spirals in the direction of increasing magnetic field (approaching the Earth), the radius of the spiral and its pitch decrease. The particle velocity vector, remaining unchanged in magnitude, approaches the plane perpendicular to the direction of the field. Finally, at a certain point (it is called a mirror point) the particle is "reflected". It begins to move in the opposite direction - to the conjugate mirror point in the other hemisphere.
One oscillation along the line of force from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere, a proton with an energy of ~ 100 MeV performs in a time of ~ 0.3 sec. The residence time ("life") of such a proton in a geomagnetic trap can reach 100 years (~ 3 × 109 sec), during which time it can make up to 1010 oscillations. On average, captured high-energy particles make up to several hundred million vibrations from one hemisphere to another.
Longitudinal drift occurs at a much lower speed. Depending on the energy, the particles make a complete revolution around the Earth in a time from several minutes to a day. Positive ions drift westward while electrons drift eastward. The movement of a particle in a spiral around the line of force of the magnetic field can be represented as consisting of rotation about the so-called. instantaneous center of rotation and translational displacement of this center along the line of force.