  Space weather is a rapidly growing area not only in scientific and
engineering applications but also in physics education and in the interest of
the public. We focus especially on space radiation and its impact on space
exploration. The topic is highly interdisciplinary bringing together
fundamental concepts of nuclear physics with aspects of radiation protection
and space science. We present a new approach to presenting the topic by
developing a web-based tool that combines some of the fundamental concepts from
these two fields in a single tool that can be developed in the context of
advanced secondary or undergraduate university education. We present DREADCode,
an outreach or teaching tool to asses rapidly the current conditions of the
radiation field in space. DREADCode uses the available data feeds from a number
of ongoing space missions to produce a first order approximation of the dose an
astronaut would receive during a mission of exploration in deep space.
DREADcode is based on a intuitive GUI interface available online from the
European Space Weather Portal. The core of the radiation transport computation
to produce the radiation dose from the observed fluence of radiation observed
by the spacecraft fleet considered is based on a relatively simple
approximation: the Bethe-Block equation. DREADCode assumes also a simplified
geometry and material configuration for the shields used to compute the dose.
The approach is approximate and it sacrifices some important physics on the
altar of a rapid execution time allowing a real time operation scenario. There
is no intention here to produce an operational tool for use in the space
science and engineering. Rather we present an educational tool at undergraduate
level that uses modern web-based and programming methods to learn some of the
most important concepts in the application of radiation protection to space
weather problems.
