(CNN) –– As Artemis II, NASA’s mission that will send four astronauts to circumnavigate the Moon next year, approaches, a new study reveals how well its Orion spacecraft will protect the crew.
The findings are based on data from Artemis I, a 25-day trip around the Moon that returned in late 2022. On that mission, the Orion capsule, which followed a similar trajectory to the one Artemis II will take, was uncrewed, but he brought special non-human guests.
Two of them, mannequin torsos called Helga and Zohartraveled on board as a test to analyze how much radiation astronauts could experience on their trip to the Moon. The mannequins were made of materials that mimicked a person’s soft tissues, organs and bones and, like the spacecraft, included detectors to track radiation exposure along the way.
Now, scientists have released the first results after studying the detector data, which were published this Wednesday in the journal Nature. The findings show that the shielding technology used on the spacecraft was effective in mitigating the radiation experienced during the journey.
“The Artemis I mission marks a crucial step in advancing our understanding of how space radiation affects the safety of future manned missions to the Moon,” said Sergi Vaquer Araujo, space medicine team leader at the European Space Agency, in a statement.
Araujo was not involved in the study, but the European Space Agency contributed five mobile dosimeters to measure radiation throughout the Orion spacecraft.
“We gained valuable information about how space radiation interacts with spacecraft shielding, the types of radiation that penetrate to reach the human body, and which areas within Orion offer the most protection,” Araujo said.
NASA has studied the impact of space radiation on human health for decades, since the first manned space missions in the 1960s. Data is also periodically collected from astronauts who spend six months to a year aboard the spacecraft. International Space Station.
The station remains in low orbit, meaning it is partially protected by Earth’s magnetic field, as well as strong shielding built into the design of the orbital laboratory. The Earth’s magnetic field also prevents cosmic rays from reaching astronauts.
But for future deep space missions, astronauts will move far from the protection of Earth and will need to rely on heavily armored spacecraft and protective spacesuits.
Long-duration space missions to the Moon and Mars will expose astronauts to radiation from cosmic rays, or high-energy particles that travel through space. To reach outer space, astronauts will also have to pass through Earth’s Van Allen belts, two bands of radiation that surround our planet like giant donuts, according to the POT.
Sensors integrated into the Orion capsule captured continuous radiation data during the round trip from Earth to the Moon for the first time, researchers said. While there is some data from the Apollo missions, it was not collected continuously.
The sensors showed that radiation exposure inside Orion varied significantly depending on the location of the detectors, according to the study authors.
As Orion passed through the Van Allen belts, data showed that the most protected areas, such as the capsule’s “storm shelter,” provided four times more protection than the least protected areas. The researchers determined that radiation exposure at these locations was kept at a safe level for the astronauts to avoid acute radiation sickness.
“The storm shelter is a very narrow area used to store supplies for the crew,” the study’s lead author, Stuart George, a scientist in the Space Radiation Analysis Group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said in an email. Houston. “We found that the storm shelter was the most protected area of the vehicle, which is good because it was designed that way.”
Passage through the Van Allen Belts was considered comparable to the crew encountering a space weather phenomenon.
As the Sun approaches solar maximum (the peak of its 11-year cycle, scheduled to occur this year), it becomes more active, releasing intense solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Coronal mass ejections are large clouds of ionized gas called plasma and magnetic fields that are released from the Sun’s outer atmosphere.
When these explosions are aimed at Earth, they can affect spacecraft, satellites, the space station, and even the Earth’s electrical grid.
“This helped us validate our shelter design to protect the crew from energetic solar particle events caused by space weather,” George said.
Exposures to cosmic rays, which may account for most of the radiation astronauts could experience on long-duration spaceflight, were 60% lower on Artemis I than those experienced on previous missions, including robotic missions to Mars, George said.
The team also noted a surprise in the discoveries. As Orion passed through the Van Allen belts, the spacecraft made a turn to activate the thruster and ensure it was on the correct trajectory. During the spin, radiation levels inside the capsule were reduced by 50% because the maneuver placed more of Orion’s shielding within the radiation path, George said.
Measurements taken during Artemis I could guide the design of future human spaceflight missions, the study authors said.
If a solar storm were to occur while the Artemis astronauts were in space, it could last for several days.
The storm shelter concept was modified for Artemis II, as the smaller shelter aboard Artemis I might not be large enough for the crew to perform normal operations if they had to remain there for an extended period during a solar storm, also known as a solar particle event.
“On Artemis II, the crew will tie supplies to the least protected wall of the Orion spacecraft,” George said by email.
“This means that during an energetic solar particle event, the crew will be able to use much more cabin space while still being protected from radiation. “It will be really interesting to test this in space, with the crew in the loop.”
The core stage of the powerful Artemis II rocket arrived at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida over the summer, and assembly is already underway on the Artemis III rocket, which is scheduled for 2026 and aims to take a woman and a person of color to the lunar south pole for the first time. time.
Meanwhile, the Artemis II crew, which includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, has training in Iceland. Although they will not land, the crew will travel 7,402 kilometers beyond the far side of the Moon to capture images of surface features, such as craters, from orbit.
“(The fact that) humans hold the camera during a lunar passage and describe what they see in language scientists can understand is a blessing for science,” said Kelsey Young, lunar science lead for Artemis II and official scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“To a large extent, that’s what we tell astronauts to do when we take them to these Moon-like environments on Earth.”
