Radiation will be a real challenge for Mars colonists, powerful solar storm shows

[Admin]

A powerful solar storm in May 2024 created auroras on Mars and provided scientists with crucial information that could aid future crewed missions to the Red Planet.

Radiation will be a real challenge for Mars colonists, powerful solar storm shows : Read more

 

[Mike Arnett]

A powerful solar storm in May 2024 created auroras on Mars and provided scientists with crucial information that could aid future crewed missions to the Red Planet.

Radiation will be a real challenge for Mars colonists, powerful solar storm shows : Read more

The title of the article is dead on the mark! But radiation is much more than solar radiation, even from solar storms. Galactic cosmic radiation is a continuous, insidious threat that has not received much attention from NASA or the civilian space community. I highly recommend Departing Earth Forever, Vols 1 and 2, by Dennis Chamberland for a complete treatment.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I was a little surprised at how small the dose reported turned out to be. Comparing the 8,100 micro Grays (0.0081 Grays) to the 0.5 Grays of a medical CT scan, it really doesn't look that bad.

But, it does give a dose to the whole body, whereas medical x-rays usually are limited to parts of the body. And, there are other days and other sources of radiation on Mars, too.

Here is some info on radiation doses for space flight to Mars and on its surface: https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/planets/10Page74.pdf .

The comparison to the average dose rate on Earth is not that useful, considering the very large differences from place to place on Earth. There is some useful info here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation , which includes this:
"The highest level of purely natural radiation ever recorded on the Earth's surface was 90 μGy/h on a Brazilian black beach . . . composed of monazite. This rate would convert to 0.8 Gy/a for year-round continuous exposure."
That is 100 times the dose on Mars from that one solar ejection event, but delivered over 365 days.
That link also provides some info on other places with high natural radiation levels on Earth, and how things like buildings add to it or reduce it.

However, at this point, epidemiological studies of human populations in these naturally high dose areas have not shown a clear effect on human health from the radiation.

So, I does not look to me like astronauts heading to Mars are going to die from radiation before they get back, or even soon after returning. And, I expect that there will be some shielding provided to whatever level is feasible.