In a room filled with expansive computer screens and blinking lights at
NASA’s Johnson
Space Centerin Houston, scientists work daily shifts to monitor
space weather conditions for astronauts on the space station. Known as space
environment officers, they’re the lifeguards of space: Instead of tidal waves
and rip currents, they keep watch for the ebb and flow of space radiation.
Each day, the scientists — who are part of Johnson’s Space Radiation
Analysis Group — check the space weather forecast from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center. They alert
mission control of potential solar activity. If solar energetic particles are
ramping up and the space station happens to be passing outside Earth’s magnetic
protection, they might recommend postponing activities that require leaving the
safety of the station. Anywhere astronauts go, the group will keep watch over
their space environment.
During a future Artemis mission, if a solar radiation squall were to occur
while astronauts are beyond Earth’s magnetic bubble, they might tell the crew
to build a temporary shelter. “Our strategy in space is to make use of whatever
mass is available,” Johnson scientist Kerry Lee said. “We’re redistributing
mass to fill in areas that are thinly shielded and getting crew members closer
to the heavily shielded areas.”
The more mass between the crew and radiation, the more likely that
dangerous particles will deposit their energy before reaching the crew. On the
Moon, astronauts could pile lunar soil, or regolith, over their shelters,
taking advantage of their environment’s natural shielding materials. But where
spacecraft design is concerned, relying on sheer bulk for protection soon grows
expensive, since more mass requires more fuel to launch.
The Johnson team works on developing shielding methods without adding more
material. “It’s unlikely that we’re going to be able to fly dedicated
radiation-shielding mass,” Lee said. “Every item you fly will have to be
multi-purpose.”
For the Orion spacecraft, they’ve designed a plan for astronauts to
build a temporary shelter with existing materials on hand, including storage
units already on board or food and water supplies. If the Sun erupted with
another storm as strong as the Apollo era’s, the Orion crew would be safe and
sound.
Other teams across NASA are meeting the radiation challenge with creative
solutions, developing technology such as wearable vests and devices that add
mass, and electrically charged surfaces that deflect radiation.
Here come the Sun’s energetic
particles
Protecting astronauts from solar energetic particle storms requires knowing
when such a storm will occur. But the particle flurries are fickle and
difficult to predict. The nature of the Sun’s turbulent eruptions is not yet
perfectly understood.
“Ideally, you could look at an active region on the Sun, see how it’s
evolving, and try to predict when it’s going to erupt,” Richardson said. “The
problem is, even if you could forecast flares and coronal mass ejections, only
a small fraction actually spawn the particles that are hazardous to
astronauts.”
And, if SEPs do come, it’s hard to predict where they will go. Magnetic
field lines are a highway for the charged particles, but as the Sun rotates,
the roadways spiral. Some particles are knocked off-road by kinks in the field
lines. As a result, they may spread far and wide through the solar system, in a
vast, nebulous cloud.
“We still have a long way to go to get to the same position as weather
forecasting on Earth,” said Yari Collado-Vega, a scientist at the Community
Coordinated Modeling Center, or CCMC, which is housed at Goddard. The CCMC is a
multi-partnership agency dedicated to space weather modeling and research.
“This has to do with the fact that we just don’t have as many data sets on the
Sun.”
Models to predict when SEPs will arrive are in the early stages of
development. One uses the arrival of lighter and faster electrons to forecast
the torrent of heavier protons that follow, which are more dangerous.
Scientists depend on NASA’s heliophysics missions to advance their space
weather forecasting models. It helps to have spacecraft at different vantage
points between the Sun and Earth. Launched in 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is
flying closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it. The spacecraft will
track SEPs near their origins — key to solving how solar eruptions accelerate
particles.
Timing is a factor too. The Sun swings through 11-year cycles of high and
low activity. During solar maximum, the Sun is freckled with sunspots, regions
of high magnetic tension that are ripe for eruption. During solar minimum, when
there are little to no sunspots, eruptions are rare.
While scientists continue to improve their models, NASA’s heliophysics
spacecraft do currently provide the observations that NASA needs to give
astronauts an “all-clear” — the okay to conduct mission activity. If there are
no active sunspots on the Sun, they can reliably say there won’t be a solar
squall.
Radiation from next-door galaxies
A second kind of space radiation travels even farther than solar energetic
particles. Galactic cosmic rays — particles from long-gone, exploded stars
elsewhere in the Milky Way — constantly bombard the solar system at near-light
speeds. If solar energetic particles are a sudden downpour, galactic cosmic
rays are more like a steady drizzle. But a drizzle can be a nuisance too.
The Aug. 7, 1972, solar flare was captured by the Big Bear Solar
Observatory in California. This particular flare — known as the seahorse flare
for the shape of the bright regions — sparked a strong SEP event that could
have been harmful to astronauts if an Apollo mission had been in progress at
the time.
Credits: NASA
https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/flares.shtml
Credits: NASA
https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/flares.shtml
Cosmic rays tend to be more powerful than even the most energetic solar
particles. The same spacecraft that would shield a crew from solar energetic
particles would not be able to keep cosmic rays at bay, so cosmic rays are a
serious concern, especially for long-duration missions like the journey to
Mars, which will take six to 10 months each way.
While SEPs are tricky to predict, galactic cosmic rays come at a steady
rate. In one second, some 90 cosmic rays strike a pocket of space the size of a
golf ball. (Meanwhile, during an SEP shower, there could be 1,000 more
particles ripping through that golf-ball-sized space.) This rate helps
determine radiation limits and mission durations — NASA’s leading strategy to
limiting cosmic ray exposure. NASA tracks astronauts’ individual doses to
ensure they don’t breach lifetime limits.
Cosmic rays are comprised of heavy elements like helium, oxygen or iron.
The hefty particles knock apart atoms when they collide with something, whether
an astronaut or the thick metal walls of a spacecraft. The impact sets off a
shower of more particles called secondary radiation — adding to the health
concern of cosmic rays.
Cosmic ray exposure is also related to the solar cycle. In the relative
calm of solar minimum, cosmic rays easily infiltrate the Sun’s magnetic field.
But during solar maximum, the Sun’s magnetic bubble strengthens with increased
solar activity, turning away some of the galactic visitors who come knocking.
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