NASA-International Space Station: NASA Warns Astronauts And Spacecraft Of Cosmic Rays

NASA Warns Astronauts And Spacecraft Of Cosmic Rays

Cosmic rays from outer space that can harm astronauts and spacecraft are rising considerably and now at a “space age” high, NASA researchers have said.

The cosmic ray strength in 2009 is at a “space age” high, said Richard Mewaldt, one of the scientists analyzing data received from NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer spacecraft which is in solar orbit about a million miles from the earth.

“The intensity is actually about 20 per cent advanced than solar-minimum periods of current decades, and if this trend continues, NASA may want to reconsider how much shielding is required if astronauts return to the moon,” said Mewaldt from California Institute of Technology.

The cosmic rays have the potential to harm astronauts, spacecraft

Cosmic rays are very-high-energy particles that originate in explosions of enormous stars elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy. They travel at nearly the speed of light and strike the Earth from every direction.

People on Earth are not in risk from the rays since the planet is enclosed by a defensive shield created by its atmosphere and magnetic field and activity on the sun, which creates a hard-to-penetrate bubble called the heliophere of wind and magnetic field around the solar system.

When the rays hit earth's atmosphere, they produce the radioactive beryllium-10 isotope, which is conserved in year-by-year layers of polar ice when it settles out of the atmosphere and is enclosed by snow.

Those ice cores show that in about 1700 the cosmic rays concentration was more than twice as high as it was during most of the space era. So we may be recurring to the levels of past centuries.

Posted by CuttsMatt | at 4:22 AM