NASA’s Curiosity program has confirmed that interplanetary manned missions at speeds attainable today is not possible due to lethal space radiation. However, Russians are preparing to speed up space travel 20-fold to get to Mars and beyond.
Once again it has been confirmed, this time empirically, that space radiation would seriously endanger cosmonauts’ lives on their trip to Mars.
The Curiosity rover mission has been collecting valuable data not only after arrival to the Mars surface. Through the eight-and-a-half month cruise to Mars the probe’s sensors were collecting information about space, including radiation levels.
Now the radiation data collected by Curiosity have published in the May 31 edition of the Science magazine by a group of scientists from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. And their prospects for manned flight to the Red Planet are dark, naming space radiation as a major threat to astronauts.
Mars
Tabula Rasa 