LOS ANGELES — Astronauts traveling to and from Mars would be bombarded with as much radiation as they would get from a full-body CT scan about once a week for a year, researchers reported Thursday. That dose would, in some cases, exceed NASA’s standards and is enough to raise an astronaut’s cancer risk by 3 percent.
As plans for deep space exploration ramp up, radiation is a big concern — from high-energy galactic cosmic rays spewed by distant supernova explosions to sporadic bursts of charged particles hurled by the sun. Earth’s magnetic field helps to deflect much of that harmful radiation.
The amount of radiation likely won’t change unless there’s a rocket engine developed that can speed up the interplanetary ride, researchers said.
The lead researcher for the analysis, which appears Friday in the journal Science, is Cary Zeitlin of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
