Thursday, September 17, 2009

Too Much Radiation For Astronauts To Make It To Mars

A trip to Phobos comes with extras (Image: NASA/JPL)

From New Scientist:

FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars orbit.

A panel tasked by the White House with reviewing NASA's human space flight activities (New Scientist, 22 August, p 8) suggests sending astronauts to one of Mars's moons, Phobos or Deimos, among other possibilities raised in its report released last week (http://tinyurl.com/mbajav).

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