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May 4, 2022 03:30 am

NASA Is Sending Artificial Female Bodies To the Moon To Study Radiation Risks

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Helga and Zohar are headed for a trip around the Moon on an important mission, measuring radiation risks for female astronauts for the first time. The inanimate pair are manikins modeled after the body of an adult woman. For the Artemis 1 mission, in which an uncrewed Orion capsule will travel to the Moon and back, one of the manikins will be outfitted with a newly developed radiation protection vest. Helga and Zohar, as they're called, won't be alone, as they'll be joined by a third manikin that will collect data about flight accelerations and vibrations. Artemis 1 is scheduled to blast off later this year. The Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, but this time the space agency has vowed to land the first woman on the dusty lunar surface. [...] The Helga and Zohar manikins are part of the MARE experiment, designed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The experiment will use two identical representations of the female body to investigate radiation exposure throughout the flight of the Artemis 1 mission, which may last up to six weeks. Artemis 1 will set the stage for Artemis 2, in which an Orion capsule carrying real humans will fly to the Moon and back (without landing), possibly as early as 2024. [...] Here's how it will work. The manikins are made from materials that mimic the bones, soft tissues, and organs of an adult woman, all of which will be tracked by more than 10,000 passive sensors and 34 active radiation detectors, according to DLR. One of the manikins, Helga, will fly to the Moon unprotected while the other one, Zohar, will wear a radiation protection vest called the AstroRad (which was developed by American aerospace company Lockheed Martin and Israeli startup StemRad). As they travel aboard the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, Helga and Zohar will be affected by the harsh environment of space. The manikins, having traveled beyond the protective shielding of Earth's magnetosphere, will be exposed to various types of space radiation, like charged particles produced by the Sun or energy particles trapped within Earth's atmosphere. Space radiation is known to alter molecules of DNA, which is obviously not good for human health. Upon their arrival back at Earth, data collected from the two manikins will help researchers to better understand the level of protection provided by the newly developed AstroRad vest.

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