NASA: Mars Travelers Would Get Fried By Radiation
Radiation Assessment Detector NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI Data collected during Curiosity's journey to Mars shows radiation exposure will present a major challenge for manned interplanetary missions. Bad news for those of you who want to go to Mars in the next few years: Without better shielding technology, they'll probably get fried by radation, as new data from Mars rover Curiosity shows. Data taken by the Mars Science Laboratory's Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, during Curiosity's interplanetary journey to Mars and published in the May 31 issue of Science provides experimental confirmation for the radiation prediction models NASA already uses. With current propulsion systems, the leisurely, 560-million-kilometer cruise to the red planet clocks in at 253 days, a length of time that based on the amount of radiation RAD registered from its shielded perch inside the spacecraft, would put astronauts above the threshold for career radiation exposure. "In terms of accumulated dose, it's like...