Toroidal Magnetic Spacecraft Shield Used to Deflect Energetic Charged Particles

摘要

The use of magnetic fields to deflect energetic charged particles has been proposed as a means to protect astronauts from the harmful radiation encountered in space. These so-called active magnetic shields must provide a region of space that is protected from energetic particles below a given energy, while also maintaining a safe level of magnetic field strength within the shielded region. A toroidally shaped environment with circular coils of wire distributed on the surface of the spacecraft is shown to satisfy these requirements. Numerical techniques are used to demonstrate that particles below a given energy, including galactic cosmic rays, are completely shielded from a region inside the toroidal spacecraft. By choosing the appropriate amplitudes of the currents flowing in the circular coils, the magnetic field strength inside this region can also be made arbitrarily small inside the toroidal spacecraft. Although many practical issues must be addressed with this design, it has been demonstrated that it is indeed possible to construct a magnetic field suitable for protecting astronauts from galactic cosmic rays during long-duration manned missions.