There are people in the world who live with the obsession that human beings are stepping on other planets. Technology is no longer a limitation, so the great barrier that remains is us, a weak and fragile species, which aims to make it very difficult to colonize places other than Earth, even one as close as the Moon. Mars Nor is it that it leads to optimism, when from our perspective we see not only its dire conditions, but also the risks involved in traveling to the planet.

A recent report titled “Manned Missions to Mars: Astrophysical Charged Particle Impact Modeling on Astronauts and Assessment of Health Effects” attempts to evaluate impact of solar and extrasolar ionizing radiation exposure on the health of astronauts intending to travel to Marsand it seems that many things will need to be planned, organized and logged to be truly secure.

The report was prepared by people from various international universities and institutes and was not peer-reviewed. He states that spacecraft, at least under current conditions, offer little protection from ionizing radiation, a factor exacerbated by the estimated 300 travel days for a one-way trip alone.

If the journey itself is a potential health risk, the conditions on Mars are no less in this sense, the more you can see its atmosphere, which does not have the necessary composition to support terrestrial life, is much less dense and lacks the protection provided. our planet. All this contributes to the fact that it lacks a magnetic field.

The report states that “adverse health effects on astronauts include, for example, acute radiation syndrome, damage to the nervous system, and an increased risk of cancer. Using a combination of radiation measurements and numerical modeling with the GEANT4 package, we calculated the radiation dose distribution in different organs of the human body for different expected scenarios simulated using the human phantom model.” To minimize the impact, those responsible are proposing “mitigation strategies such as improved forms of protection and dietary supplements, and we are making recommendations for the safety of astronauts on future manned missions to Mars.”“.

The European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) have set a limit to the radiation that astronauts can be exposed to throughout their careers. The first and third have it at 1 Sievert (Sv), while NASA has set it at 0.6 Sievert.

Those responsible for the report state that by A 1,000-day round trip found that most organs in an astronaut’s body would contain radiation levels greater than 1 Sievert, making a trip to Mars unsustainable under current conditions..

This report contrasts with other information that said that travel to Mars was not as serious a problem as was believed. Whether what is stated in this latest report is indeed true (remember, it is pending peer review), everything points to the fact that space travel will not be the fascinating experience that is sold to us from fiction, but rather a test of survival. which the crew will have to pay extreme attention to even the smallest detail.