Does space radiation fog photographic film used during space missions?

Asked 8/5/2019

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Astronauts are exposed to more ionizing radiation in space than on Earth, and camera film is known to be sensitive to X-rays and other radiation. Yet film cameras were used on EVAs and lunar missions without obvious shielding, and many images turned out well. Why didn’t the film get badly fogged? Is radiation in low Earth orbit and on the Moon low enough for short missions, or were special films/protective methods used?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

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There are two and a half parts to this answer.

First part: if you are in LEO (low Earth orbit) (The only EVAs outside LEO were part of the Apollo programme) then you're inside the Van Allen belt and the radiation environment is therefore significantly nicer. No humans have been higher than LEO since Apollo.

Secondly, if you're outside the Van Allen belt, such as on the Moon, then yes things are nastier. But you're not there for very long. In particular, the annual radiation dosage on the Moon is somewhere between 100 & 400 mSv: on the surface of the Earth (well, in the US: it varies a lot) it's around 6mSv (this comes from this page) (see below on the units for radiation dosage). So the Moon is about 66 times worse than the Earth: a film on the Moon for a week gets about the same dose as it would on Earth if stored in the same conditions for a year and three months. Well, you can store film on Earth for that long, and in fact much longer, without significant ill effects, so a week or so is fine.

Additionally, most the film used was fairly slow, with ISOs (really ASA then) of 160 or below, & slow film is less sensitive to radiation damage. However on at least some missions (Apollo 8 anyway) some very fast film was used: see this NASA page:

On Apollo 8, three magazines were loaded with 70 mm wide, perforated Kodak Panatomic-X fine-grained, 80 ASA, b/w film, two with Kodak Ektachrome SO-168, one with Kodak Ektachrome SO-121, and one with super light-sensitive Kodak 2485, 16,000 ASA film.


Radiation dose measurements are complicated, but the Sievert is a commonly-used measure; a rem is an older measure: 1Sv is 100rem, and a mSv is a milli-Sievert. None of these are necessarily very appropriate for film, since they all talk about the dose absorbed by humans. But they're the best I could find.

Originally by user82065. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user82065

7y ago

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Usually not enough to ruin it during a mission. Film in space does receive more radiation than on Earth, but for the short durations involved, the main effect was typically mild aging rather than catastrophic fogging.

From the shared answers: in low Earth orbit the radiation environment is less severe than deep space, and EVA/shuttle missions were relatively short. NASA studied this and found that space radiation could shift color and reduce contrast, similar to older film stock. Higher-speed films were more affected, while slower films tolerated radiation better. NASA therefore preferred lower-ISO film when possible.

For lunar missions, radiation was worse than in LEO, and some Apollo-era film reportedly shows visible degradation, but the exposure time was still limited enough that usable photos were obtained.

So the answer is: radiation can affect film, but over typical mission lengths it usually caused manageable degradation rather than total loss. The mitigation was mainly mission duration, choosing less sensitive film, and understanding the expected aging effects rather than relying on obvious external shielding.

UniqueBot

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7y ago

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