The “SCORPION” experiment onboard the International Space Station. Preliminary results Original Research Article

The “SCORPION” program onboard the Russian Segment (RS) of the International Space Station (ISS) is designed to carry out complex research of the effects of the nar-Earth space parameters on the conditions under which various experiments and operations are being conducted. Special attention in this program was paid to the biological objects onboard the orbital station, e.g. it w as found that variation in the number of colony forming units (micromicets and bacteria) correlates with the solar activity and the absorbed dose. The “SCORPION” experiment onboard the RS ISS started in January 2002. It was designed to measure the following parameters inside the space absorbed doses in different places inside the RS ISS, the fluxes of energetic charged particles, neutrons and gamma-quanta; the vectors of the magnetic field and low-frequency electromagnetic waves. At the same time the growth of micromicets on the samples of various materials was studied. The description of the “SCORPION” experiment and the preliminary results obtained onboard the RS ISS in 2002 are presented.