What would happen if the Artemis II crew were hit by solar radiation?

If there’s one thing the Artemis II should be worried about (other than their toilet breaking) it’s solar flares, an expert has told Metro.

A towering Nasa rocket named Intergry blasted off yesterday evening, sending four astronauts moonbound for the first time in half a century.

Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will spend 10 days inside the minivan-sized Orion deep-space capsule.

The main point of the mission is simple: testing important systems aboard Orion, including life support and deep-space communications.

But another is just how much the Orion can protect the crew from space weather.

Our sun is an angry ball of churning plasma, constantly spewing radiation with the strength of millions of volcanic eruptions.

Some of these bursts, called solar flares, can make their way to Earth and fry satellites, mangle GPS networks and cause the Northern Lights.

Us Earthlings don’t need to worry about flares that much, as the Earth’s invisible shield against them, the magnetic field, keeps us safe.

Astronauts in the cosmos, however, have no such protection, Dr Ben Clewer, a space weather system developer at the Surrey Space Centre, tells Metro.

He says: ‘This is a major concern for space travel beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO), as the travel is outside the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field.

‘The impacts are wide ranging, from causing the aurora on Earth, radio communication interruptions, errors in electronic systems, an increased radiation dose to the crew and ultimately system damage to spacecraft.

‘Limiting the impacts of any increased radiation will be an important aspect of the Artemis mission as space radiation can put astronauts at significant risk for radiation sickness, increased lifetime risk for cancer, central nervous system effects, and degenerative diseases.’

How could astronauts protect themselves?

Dr Clewer says that the solar events that cause the most damage travel from the sun to Earth ‘in less than 20 minutes’.

If that happened, the spacefarers would shelter inside two stowage lockers underneath their seats.

The dense material the Orion is made of will act as a shield, Nasa says.

The capsule also has a radiation sensor, called a Hybrid Electronic Radiation Assessor, that’ll raise the alarm if it detects solar flares.

Dr Clewer adds: ‘The particles won’t be fully shielded against, however, and the capsule could experience impacts.

‘The astronauts might see an increase in flashes with their eyes closed (where particles interact with their retinas), but in the worst case, if the solar flare was really large – the type that occurs once every 100 years on average, would be radiation sickness for the astronauts and/or failures in the control systems of the spacecraft.’

Dr Clewer warns that a sunspot, which shoots out solar flares as well as giant particle explosions called coronal mass ejections, about the size of 15 Earths is currently facing Earth.

One coronal mass ejection earlier this week even risked forcing Nasa to postpone Artemis II – again.

Dr Clewer says: ‘Space weather scientists are constantly monitoring the Sun, and the Artemis missions have a whole team just for this purpose, ready to advise what to do.

‘In the longer term of human spaceflight, space weather and solar radiation are the biggest danger to humans travelling to Mars.’

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