A method for estimating the bremsstrahlung dose into spacecraft from incident electrons

An approximate procedure is proposed for finding the dose from radiation belt electron-induced bremsstrahlung inside spacecraft. A good agreement (to within 10%) with the direct three-dimensional Monte-Carlo calculation is attained when the spacecraft material is homogenized. If a homogeneous slab of material is used to estimate absorbed dose inside a spacecraft, the resultant estimate proves to be up to five times as low as the result obtained using a randomly inhomogeneous distribution of spacecraft material for an electron spectrum in a geosynchronous orbit.