Little or no solar wind enters Venus' atmosphere at solar minimum.

Venus has no significant internal magnetic field, which allows the solar wind to interact directly with its atmosphere. A field is induced in this interaction, which partially shields the atmosphere, but we have no knowledge of how effective that shield is at solar minimum. (Our current knowledge of the solar wind interaction with Venus is derived from measurements at solar maximum.) The bow shock is close to the planet, meaning that it is possible that some solar wind could be absorbed by the atmosphere and contribute to the evolution of the atmosphere. Here we report magnetic field measurements from the Venus Express spacecraft in the plasma environment surrounding Venus. The bow shock under low solar activity conditions seems to be in the position that would be expected from a complete deflection by a magnetized ionosphere. Therefore little solar wind enters the Venus ionosphere even at solar minimum.

Investigation on contribution of neutron monitor data to estimation of aviation doses.

Recently, many efforts have appeared to routinely measure radiation exposure (RE) of aircraft crew due to cosmic rays (CR). On the other hand real-time CR data measured with the ground based neutron monitors (NMs) are collected worldwide and available online. This is an opportunity for comparison of long-term observations of RE at altitudes of about 10km, where composition and energy spectra of secondary particles differ from those on the ground, with the data from NMs. Our contribution presents examples of such type of comparison. Analysis of the silicon spectrometer Liulin measurements aboard aircraft is presented over the period May-September 2005 and compared with data from a single NM at middle latitude. While extreme solar driven events observed by NMs have clearly shown an impact on dosimetric characteristics as measured on the airplanes, the transient short time effects in CR of smaller amplitude have been not studied extensively in relation to RE. For the period May-September 2005, when aircraft data become available and several Forbush decreases (FDs) are observed on the ground, a small improvement in the correlation between the dose measured and multiple linear regression fit based on two key parameters (altitude and geomagnetic cut-off rigidity), is obtained, if the CR intensity at a single NM is added into the scheme.

Some methodological aspects of estimating cosmic ray exposures in orbital flights.

Computations of the transmission functions of cosmic rays penetrating the geomagnetic field are discussed. Results of LET spectra calculations both inside and outside the spacecraft COSMOS-1129 are presented. Comparison of calculations and measured results shows (in interval 10-5 x 10(3) MeV/cm) a difference of less than 30%. The need for further systematic low altitude particle measurements for the purpose of developing dynamic models of particle populations is stressed.