Aviation Radiation
Traceable calculations for record keeping and operational monitoring.

The Aviation Radiation API delivers radiation exposure records for aircraft operations, supporting planned routes for pre-flight estimates, and ADS-B recorded aircraft tracks for post-flight assessments using CARI7 or NASA's NAIRAS model.

Use planned routes, recorded flight tracks, and hourly NAIRAS nowcast data for operational monitoring, route assessment, and solar energetic particle event awareness.

Regulatory context

Aviation radiation assessment supports aircrew health and safety programs, flight-planning reviews, regulatory reporting, and auditable exposure records. The API is intended to make those workflows repeatable inside customer systems, reducing dependence on manual calculations or mandrolic consulting reports.

In Europe, Section OPS 1.390 of the European Union COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 859/2008 and Council Directive 96/29/Euratom outlines the standards for the protection of workers from ionizing radiation exposures. Assessments are a regulatory requirement.

In South Korea, the Living Environment Radiation Control Act includes obligations for airlines to record, store, and report radiation exposure data and includes penalty provisions for violations of the Act.

Capabilities

Flexible Endpoints

Use flighttrack to estimate effective dose from satellite-based ADS-B tracks along the actual flown trajectory, route to calculate planned-route dose on a great-circle path with optional step-climb, and point to support tighter integration with existing aviation systems.

Trusted Models

CARI7 is the FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute model for routine commercial flight dose estimation, well suited to planned routes, operational records, and regulatory exposure assessment.

NAIRAS is NASA's physics-based radiation model with real-time space-sensor measurements, well suited to hourly nowcast monitoring and solar energetic particle event awareness on polar routes.

Planned and actual dose records

Actual route dose estimates

Aircrew radiation exposure varies with altitude, latitude, route, flight duration, and solar modulation. flighttrack supports post-flight assessment from flight-tracks observed by a global-coverage ADS-B satellite constellation. Provide the aircraft ICAO 24-bit address and UTC departure date, and the API evaluates dose rate along actual waypoints, then integrates exposure across recorded time intervals between waypoints.

The response includes total effective dose and waypoints with altitude, timestamp, and dose-rate values. For multiple flights by same aircraft on the departure date, results are returned for each flight number.

Subscriptions are priced at $390 per aircraft per month, with a 10 aircraft minimum, and are covered by our Service Level Agreement.

Email for onboarding Read API Docs

map

Planned route dose estimates

For customers that do not need recorded aircraft-track reconstruction, the lower-cost route endpoint estimates effective dose for planned airport-to-airport or coordinate-defined great-circle routes with optional step-climb parameters. The point endpoint enables tighter integration with operational software systems by calculating dose rates at waypoints.

Subscriptions start from $240 per month, with no minimum number of aircraft, and are covered by our Service Level Agreement.

Read API Docs

Ready to test the Aviation Radiation API?

Point, route, and flight-track endpoints support CARI7 for routine dose estimation and NAIRAS for hourly nowcast monitoring and solar energetic particle event awareness. The API is exposed through standard web interfaces on product-grade cloud infrastructure for enterprise software, flight-planning tools, SaaS platforms, and mobile apps.

Create a trial account, browse the endpoint documentation, and start working with example aviation radiation datasets.

Start free API trial Browse API documentation

CARI7 solar corrections

Antarctic measurements improve accuracy

The interplanetary magnetic field is a result of the solar wind produced by our Sun. The Heliocentric Potential (HP) describes the level of shielding that the interplanetary magnetic field provides us from galactic cosmic rays. The greater the HP value, the lower the radiation dose at the same altitude. The HP value is modulated by the solar cycle.

Neutron monitoring stations tell us how much residual cosmic radiation there is at ground level. High latitude stations (e.g. Antarctica) provide the clearest picture due to the minimal geomagnetic shielding.

Our Aviation Radiation API uses official HP values from the US FAA. We predict our own values to ensure dose calculations can be made for today's date (in case of delayed release of official values). Our automated data management system fetches real-time neutron monitor data from the Australian Antarctic Division and feeds that into a machine-learning pipeline that predicts current HP values.

The figure to the right shows the official and predicted HP values that we use in our radiation calculations.

a white wing in a yellow box - the logo of hello icaro - science driven technology to improve safety, sustainability, and efficiency, in aviation.