NASA's Curiosity rover begins new mission on Mars to protect visiting astronauts: Report

Since humans are determined to visit Mars and terraform it for permanent human settlement, being ready on all fronts is essential to ensure survival. Needless to say, the red planet will not be welcoming to humans initially as its rough atmosphere will pose grave threats to the visitors. Astronauts will be exposed to all sorts of radiation as Mars does not have a magnetosphere to protect them from harsh space radiations and deadly charged particles emerging from the sun. To prepare the astronauts for such conditions, NASA's Curiosity rover is providing new data with its radiation sensor about the health risks humans would face on the surface. The rover has begun its mission to identify potential protective prospects, which would shield astronauts from the aforementioned harmful factors. 

Curiosity comes to the rescue

Scientists with NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover team, using the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), are helping explore if lava tubes, caves, or subsurface habitats will offer a safe refuge for future astronauts on Mars. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Curiosity’s RAD data has revealed that using natural materials such as the rock and sediment on Mars could offer some protection from the ever-present space radiation. The said data was collected from Sept. 9 to 21 in 2016, while the rover was parked against a cliff at a location called “Murray Buttes”, as per a paper published in JGR Planets earlier this year.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

During its stay, RAD measured a 4% decrease in overall radiation and a 7.5% decrease in neutral particle radiation, including neutrons that can penetrate rock and are especially harmful to human health. Bent Ehresmann, lead author of the paper said as per JPL,

"We’ve been waiting a long time for the right conditions to get these results, which are critical to ensure the accuracy of our computer models. At Murray Buttes, we finally had these conditions and the data to analyze this effect. We’re now looking for other locations where RAD can repeat these kinds of measurements."

Most of the radiation data produced by the RAD are from the cosmic rays, which are particles that emerged from exploding stars and get scattered throughout the universe. Don Hassler, principal investigator of the RAD instrument told JPL, "Cosmic rays, solar radiation, solar storms, they are all components of space weather, and RAD is effectively a space weather outpost on the surface of Mars". Scientists believe that their knowledge about the Martian landscapes and the areas of higher radiation will become clearer as the sun has started to get more active. "More observations are needed to assess just how dangerous a really powerful solar storm would be to humans on the Martian surface. RAD’s findings will feed into a much larger body of data being compiled for future crewed missions" said JPL in a report.

Image: Twitter/@MarsCuriosity