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Abstract As recent studies onboard various spacecraft have shown, one unresolved technical problem of manned interplanetary flights at the moment is the high radiation background of interplanetary space, which, as in the case of a manned mission to Mars, can be critically dangerous for the crew. Work on this topic is being carried out by all space agencies. One such space experiment is represented by the BTN-Neutron experiment onboard the Russian section of the International Space Station (ISS). The main result of the work was the construction of the BTN-M2 instrument for creating effective radiation protection onboard prospective manned spacecraft, creating an engineering model of the radiation background both inside and outside the ISS, and for registration of γ rays and neutrons during solar flares and cosmic γ-ray bursts.

An Erratum to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0010952522330012

This article presents first results for laboratory tests of a concept of space gamma-spectrometer with tagged protons method at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems of JINR. There are presented results of a significant increase in the sensitivity of the gamma-ray instrument for the main rock-forming elements of celestial bodies in case of selecting spectrometer signals according to the criterion of coincidence with protons, which cause secondary gamma radiation in a thick target as an analogue of planetary matter.

The method of remote neutron and gamma spectrometry of bodies in the solar system (the Moon, Mars, and Mercury) has been used for several decades to estimate the nuclear composition of these objects and the hydrogen abundance in their subsurface layers. Proportional gas counters based on helium-3 (3He), which have the maximum efficiency of detecting thermal and epithermal neutrons, are used most often for measuring the low-energy neutron component. However, the data from LEND and FREND space experiments with large-volume and high-pressure helium counters revealed the noise contamination of lower channels of the neutron component due to the sensitivity of such counters to cosmic charged particles. The model of a promising neutron detector with anticoincidence protection, which is free from this drawback, is presented below.

A new concept is proposed for the study of the elemental composition of planetary surfaces on landed missions through the coincident detection of gamma rays induced by Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) charged particles and the detection of the incident charged particle that produces the gamma ray. Charged particle detection is used to tag all instances of GCR interaction in a selected volume of the subsurface that results in the emission of secondary gamma rays. Using the criteria of a tagged GCR particle and coincident gamma ray detection, one may measure gamma ray spectra produced in a selected subsurface volume by GCR induced spallation and inelastic scattering of fast neutrons. The proposed new technique minimizes the contribution of gamma radiation from other regions of the subsurface and spacecraft structural components that may add background to the measured gamma-ray spectrum from the selected soil volume.