Overview of HZETRN and BRNTRN space radiation shielding codes

The NASA Radiation Health Program has supported basic research over the last decade in radiation physics to develop ionizing radiation transport codes and corresponding data bases for the protection of astronauts from galactic and solar cosmic rays on future deep space missions. The codes describe the interactions of the incident radiations with shield materials where their content is modified by the atomic and nuclear reactions through which high energy heavy ions are fragmented into less massive reaction products and reaction products are produced as radiations as direct knockout ofshield constituents or produced as de-excitation products in the reactions. This defines the radiation fields to which specific devices are subjected onboard a spacecraft. Similar reactions occur in the device ilself which is the initiating event for the device response. An overview of the computational procedures and data base with some applications to photonic and data processing devices will be given.