Humans To Mars: Are We There Yet?

Everyone these days are talking about colonizing mars, and sustaining life there. In fact, some big companies like SpaceX are working day and night to make it possible. However, while it is very exciting to think about, there are many technological challenges we have to overcome. This blog is the first blog in the series challenges to colonize mars and how can we deal with it. Let's start with very initial, let's say we have built a ship to carry humans to mars and we successfully departed from our mother planet. The first and one of the biggest challenge we will face is the space radiation.

The radiation environment of space consists of electromagnetic radiation and charged particles that have been accelerated to high velocities. The charged particles come from three primary sources, Solar Particle Events (SPE), Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) and Trapped Radiation. These radiations are extremely harmful. It has been reported that long-term exposure to high levels of space radiation can irremediably damage to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and significantly increase the risk of cancer. Moreover, degenerative tissue effects, damages in the central nervous system and acute radiation syndrome  are among the other possible space radiation risks. On earth we are protected from these harmful radiation due to presence of Earth's magnetic field, it works like a shield for us. So leaving earth's magnetic field is very risky, but the spaceship layer can protect us from the radiation right? Well not entirely, a lot of work is being done in improving the shielding capacity of spaceship by analyzing various material, however no material can completely shield from all the energetic particles. I have done some work in this area to find the solution for this problem, I presented that work during SSI 2020. In this write-up I am not going to dig deep into the technicality, but if you still want to have a look, here is the link of my work.

Link: https://conf.slac.stanford.edu/ssi2020/poster-p5-spacecraft-shielding-design-and-dynamics-for-journey-mars

We don't have any material yet which can protect humans from all sort of radiation during journey to mars. Now, don't get dissapointed because there are many other ways too with which we can shield ourselves. Active shielding is the most famous method for shielding. The idea is simple, just like earth create an magnetic field around the spacecraft which will work like earth's magnetic field, now the strength of magnetic field varies with lot of parameters still lot of work is going on to make it an even more efficient process. 

Another way is the biological protection, so the idea is that use some supplements to make your system more adaptive to the space environment, serious research has already been done on it. Vitamin C is a promising radiomitigator which can be used up to 24 hours after exposure to high levels of ionizing radiation in cases such as the occurrence of solar particle events. Moreover, considering the concerns regarding the effect of space radiation on the eyes of the astronauts, it has recently been shown that Vitamin C intake is inversely associated with the risk of getting cataract. It has been found the human pelvic region is more prone to get damage with radiation than any other part due to concentration of bone marrow. It has been suggested that shielding of 10% of the active (red) bone marrow can result in almost 100% survival. So rather than making a protective suit for the whole body, the suit that covers the Pelvic area will also work this will also be cost-efficient. One of the best ways of shielding it is making a suit filled with water, which is proven to be very effective in blocking the radiation.

These are some of the challanges which will be faced by astronauts during their journey to mars. There are other challenges too such as adaption of body for the condition of micro gravity and weightlessness. We will discuss these problems in detail in later section of this series. 

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