In-flight performance of SilEye-2 experiment and cosmic ray abundances inside the Mir space station

Cosmic ray measurements performed with the instrument SilEye-2 on the Mir space station are presented. SilEye-2 is a silicon detector telescope used to study the causes of the light flashes perceived by astronauts. As a stand-alone device, it monitors the short- and long-term radiation composition inside Mir. The cosmic ray detector consists of an array of six active silicon strip detectors which allow nuclear identification of cosmic rays up to iron. The device was operational for more than 1000 h in the years 1998-2000, also measuring several solar particle events. In this work we present the in-flight performance of the instrument and nuclear abundance data from boron to silicon above similar or equal to 150 MeV n(-1) inside Mir.