Radiation shielding vest could reduce cancer risk for astronauts on deep space missions

A radiation shielding vest tested during the uncrewed Artemis I flight in 2022 has been shown to significantly reduce the radiation dose that future astronauts or deep-space tourists might receive.

The data for this analysis were obtained via seating two human-tissue-equivalent female torso phantoms in the Orion crew capsule. While the “Zohar” phantom wore the new AstroRad vest, its travel companion “Helga” did not. Numerous radiation dosimeters placed in and on the phantoms allowed the received radiation dose to be compared.

“Exposure to radiation in space is unavoidable, and a single major solar particle event (SPE) can deliver more than one-third of NASA’s 600 millisievert career effective-dose limit. A three-year round trip to Mars would equal or exceed the career limit, which corresponds to a 3% mortality risk from radiation-induced cancer. So we developed the AstroRad vest to significantly reduce this hazard,” explains immunologist Oren Milstein, CEO of StemRad Radiation Protection, which began developing the vest with Lockheed Martin in 2015.

The shielding thickness varies throughout the garment according to the radiation sensitivity of the underlying organs, with breasts, colon, lungs, ovaries, stomach and red bone marrow having concentrated shielding in the test vest. Milstein was inspired to develop this targeted architecture based on the experiences of his PhD supervisor, who treated the first responders to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

With damage to bone marrow the accepted cause of death for all those emergency workers who lost their lives within months of the accident, “that heritage instilled in me a desire to protect people from radiation by selective shielding of the bone marrow,” Milstein explains, adding that the female focus of this experiment is because women have a higher predicted risk of radiation-induced cancer than men.

Astronauts currently shield from SPEs in “storm shelters” consisting of barricades of supplies, or by moving into areas containing more hardware against the walls. AstroRad provides a similar level of protection to the most robust shelter configuration while also “allowing the astronaut wearing it to move around the cabin and continue mission-critical tasks,” radiation physicist Jordan Houri, lead scientist for space exploration at StemRad, tells Physics World.

To maintain flexibility, the vest is constructed from thousands of hexagonal tessellated rods of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) sandwiched between two layers of elastic fabric. The shielding components can also slide past one another and stretch. HDPE was chosen for its high proportion of hydrogen – which is extremely effective at shielding against charged particle space radiation.

While Artemis I did not encounter a solar storm, Orion traversed the inner Van Allen belt, whose protons cover a similar energy range to those in SPEs. This enabled the team to construct a Monte Carlo model of the experiment for testing different radiation environments.

“We created digital twins of Helga and Zohar, the AstroRad vest, radiation detectors and spacecraft shielding,” explains Houri. “Using this model, we generated hundreds of billions of virtual protons and electrons representing the radiation environment of the inner Van Allen belt, before comparing the predicted detector responses directly with the measurements recorded during Artemis I.”

With close agreement found, the researchers then simulated measured SPEs from August 1972 and October 1989. As detailed in their recent Science Advances paper, this revealed that wearing AstroRad would reduce effective dose by around 60% in an August 1972-type scenario, and by almost 40% for a 1989-type SPE – sparing astronauts the dose equivalent from up to 193 and 131 days of deep space travel, respectively.

Combining these results with those from previous experiments, which tested the vests’ ergonomics on the International Space Station, is allowing the researchers to improve comfort and ease of motion, and reduce mass. They are also exploring whether lighter, empty vests could be filled with recycled polyethylene after launch.

Alongside the health benefits, reducing radiation exposure makes economic sense as it extends astronauts’ careers, concludes Milstein, who hopes that the AstroRad vests can help “make lunar habitation and Mars travel truly sustainable and not just a dream”.

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