TECH

Radiation standards might be relaxed for Mars trip

Ledyard King
FLORIDA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- One of many factors complicating a trip to Mars is the space radiation that would bombard astronauts during the approximately two years they would spend getting to the planet, exploring it and returning home.

NASA is already working to develop more radiation-resistant space suits and stronger magnetic shields for the spacecraft. Agency officials also are exploring a new tack: relaxing NASA's health standards for astronauts so it would be easier to meet them.

Getting to Mars -- and living there -- will take a lot more than a big rocket, an inexhaustible fuel supply and a crew of gritty astronauts. It also will require attention to myriad details, including oxygen systems, communication networks, power generation and, yes, health concerns.

NASA officials addressed the radiation issue Tuesday during the first day of the Humans to Mars Summit 2014 at George Washington University attended by independent policy experts, university researchers and aerospace company representatives.

Those in attendance, including former Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, have united around the goal of delivering humans to Mars for an extended and perhaps permanent stay.

NASA is aiming for a landing in the early 2030s. Even with two decades to prepare, such a journey to a planet millions of miles away requires hundreds of steps every day.

One such step involves calculating an acceptable level of radiation for astronauts, a question NASA took to the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academies.

"We're pushing not only the technology that helps protect the (astronaut) but also looking at the requirements we have," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration told the Humans to Mars Summit. "Are they really realistic requirements? Or has today's medical environment allowed us to do things differently?"

The institute's answer, issued by a committee earlier this month, is that current medical standards for radiation exposure should remain in effect, though exceptions could be granted "in rare circumstances." If an exception were permitted, NASA would be ethically bound to provide astronauts with health care beyond the end of their missions, the committee said.

The radiation issue is one of eight areas NASA engineers have highlighted as key challenges in a manned Mars mission. The other seven are: communications/navigation, propulsion, entry/descent/landing, robotics, life support systems, power generation, and conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen.

Carbon dioxide makes up 95 percent of the Martian atmosphere.

Some of the challenges are being tackled on a limited scale at the International Space Station, but solutions won't come overnight, said Michael Gazarik, NASA's Associate administrator for space technology.

The orbiting lab is "the proving ground," he told the audience at the summit. "We've got to take systems from days or months and (extend) the duration. We need the time and capability to do that."

Greg Cecil, a science teacher and space aficionado who attended the summit, said many of the scientific challenges can be overcome. But the turf battles and ego wars that continually play out between administrations and Congress, he said, are a different matter.

"The technology I'm not worried about whatsoever," said Cecil, who spent more than five years as a technician on the space shuttle program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida before he was laid off over program cuts. "It's the politics. Getting people behind it."