Mars-Bound Probe Serves As Radiation Guinea Pig

sighted writes "This week's huge solar storm will benefit future astronauts, thanks to the rover Curiosity, now on its way to Mars. The rover is equipped with an instrument that measures the radiation exposure that could affect a human astronaut en route to the Red Planet. Scientists are just starting to pore over the data from the blast of particles. Don't worry about the poor robotic geologist, though: 'No harmful effects to the Mars Science Laboratory have been detected from this solar event,' says NASA."

Comments

Damn no one tell

[Dyinobal]

I hope no on tells PETA that NASA is irradiating a guinea pig with a probe.

D.O.A.

[ebonum]

This problem could make a manned trip to Mars impossible. The radiation in open space from one solar flare would fry a bunch of astronauts. Sending people to Mars becomes a gamble on the odds of a solar event occurring. Worse yet. There is no technology within reach that can protect astronauts from this type of radiation. A few feet of lead shielding might help some, but the weight would be too much to get into space. Plus, try slowing down all that mass when you arrive at Mars. Perhaps a nuclear powered wire loop ( super conducting??? ) with a circumference of a mile or two? Something with enough kick to deflect super high speed charged particles a few meters - enough to keep them away from the crew?...
I don't see any way to get people to mars with an acceptably high probability of survival.

Re:D.O.A.

[celticryan]

You are not quite right. For this sort of radiation, lead is not so great. You want shielding that contains lots of low-Z nuclei. The more hydrogen the better. This is because you get a lot of secondary nuclear fragments and hydrogen minimizes these sort of interactions. For Mars, it actually isn't the solar storms that are worrying - it is the fairly constant galactic cosmic ray background that is more difficult to shield against. It is has a high energy tail that is quit penetrating.

Solar storms are important, but a small storm shelter inside the craft can, in principal, handle this. Storms are typically short, so confining the crew to this area is typically reasonable.

My nomination

[PopeRatzo]

Newt was not the first to propose an ambitious space project.

Mars, bitches!

And this, my fellow Americans, is why we need to have our first real black president.

Re:On the surface

[cavreader]

You are correct. We are protected on Earth by the planets magnetic fields and atmosphere. The amount of radiation every bio-organism on the planet is subjected too has played an important role in evolution on the planet. Too much radiation or smaller amounts of radiation could have nudged evolution to the extent where humans may never have evolved in it's current form. One thing that I have wandered about is why people think that human evolution has stopped. If there are humans still alive in a couple of million years would the species have the same physical traits that exist today? The environmental conditions the human species originally evolved from is constantly being changed by both natural and man made activity. On the moon we could lessen our exposure to radiation by building underground but for Mars we would need a way to protect people during the voyage before we could start building underground habitats on that planet. I believe someone will eventually make a break through in understanding how to nullify and manipulate radiation levels when necessary. So far we have just tapped the most obvious uses of the electromagnetic spectrum we use in our communication devices and computers but there is still a great deal we do not understand. Even our knowledge of nuclear processes is weak when it comes to practical applications. We can produce fission for bombs and power plants but we cannot harness fusion based processes in the real world. Does anyone else think that the guys who built and deployed the first nuclear bomb were 100% confident that the nuclear reaction would not start a chain reaction in the atmosphere? Doing the math is one thing but actually detonating a nuclear weapon was something altogether different and risky.