Abstract
During the upcoming decades, all important worldwide space agencies are planning to undertake interplanetary travels outside the terrestrial magnetic field with the goal of achieving many purposes: from scientific exploration to economical gain. This effort requires to face one of the greatest issues in space: radiation. The present work deals with an investigation on the radiation dose astronauts may receive during two of the most important missions, i.e. the Moon and Mars colonization. Concerning the assessment, the missions are divided into many segments in order to take into consideration all the different radiation sources. The main radiation the astronauts are going to face are SPE – Solar Proton Events and GCR – Galactic Cosmic Rays, since radiation belts around Earth may be neglected due to the short exposure time. We have developed a new program code, which takes as input particle fluxes recorded by some specific satellites, such as ACE and GOES, and allows the user to choose some principal parameters related to shielding and geometric conditions. As output, the code gives the value of the effective dose and the ambient dose equivalent, both expressed in Sievert, as also addressed by recent radiation protection commissions pubblications. Furthermore, there will be the chance to make the code available online, in order to allow online users to access it.