Orion flies to the Moon with cosmic ray detectors from NPI

On November 16, 2022, the Orion spacecraft on the Artemis I mission took off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on its way towards the Moon. Onboard there are the women phantoms (mannequins) Helga and Zohar as part of the DLR MARE experiment. They are equipped, among other instruments, with detectors measuring cosmic radiation, developed by the Department of Radiation Dosimetry (DRD) of the Nuclear Physics Institute of the CAS.

The Matroshka AstroRad Radiation Experiment (MARE) is the first large-scale experiment to measure the effects of radiation exposure on the female body beyond the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS). The coordinator of MARE is the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The main partners of the project are the Israel Space Agency ISA, the Israeli company StemRad, which developed the AstroRad protective vest, Lockheed Martin company and the NASA space agency. In addition to us, universities and research institutes from Austria, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Switzerland, Japan and the USA also participate in MARE.

The twin mannequins are made of materials imitating the bones and soft tissues of adult women in order to measure the dose from cosmic radiation in sensitive organs. Each phantom consists of 38 slices with integrated sensors. Zohar will wear an AstroRad flight-tested safety vest, while Helga will fly unprotected.

There is well-known that women generally have a higher risk of developing cancer than men. One of the risk factors is cosmic radiation, which is many times higher in space than on Earth - for example, roughly 800 times on the Moon. It is therefore crucial to accurately determine radiation exposure and develop protective measures for the crews of future long-duration missions.

Visualization: DLR