Apprenticeship 2017-2018: Richard Chen

While on Earth, we are mostly protected from the sun’s harmful, radiate rays by the atmosphere and the magnetic field. These two work in conjunction to deflect the sun’s harmful rays or to filter them out before they can cause serious damage to our DNA. NASA has identified radiation shielding to be a crucial technology to protect astronauts on extended space missions [5]. This is because the immediate space environment lacks the radioprotective layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field. Once astronauts exit Earth’s orbit, they are no longer being protected against the radiation. Furthermore, planets like Mars not only have an atmosphere much thinner than Earth’s, they have no magnetic field whatsoever, meaning that the radioprotection offered by it is much less in comparison [2]. To protect astronauts and electronic equipment from radiation, several countermeasures must be developed, ranging from technological shielding to biomedical innovations.