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Moon NASA

NASA Is Sending Artificial Female Bodies To the Moon To Study Radiation Risks (gizmodo.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the safety-first dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Helga and Zohar are headed for a trip around the Moon on an important mission, measuring radiation risks for female astronauts for the first time. The inanimate pair are manikins modeled after the body of an adult woman. For the Artemis 1 mission, in which an uncrewed Orion capsule will travel to the Moon and back, one of the manikins will be outfitted with a newly developed radiation protection vest. Helga and Zohar, as they're called, won't be alone, as they'll be joined by a third manikin that will collect data about flight accelerations and vibrations. Artemis 1 is scheduled to blast off later this year. The Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time in over 50 years, but this time the space agency has vowed to land the first woman on the dusty lunar surface. [...]

The Helga and Zohar manikins are part of the MARE experiment, designed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The experiment will use two identical representations of the female body to investigate radiation exposure throughout the flight of the Artemis 1 mission, which may last up to six weeks. Artemis 1 will set the stage for Artemis 2, in which an Orion capsule carrying real humans will fly to the Moon and back (without landing), possibly as early as 2024. [...] Here's how it will work. The manikins are made from materials that mimic the bones, soft tissues, and organs of an adult woman, all of which will be tracked by more than 10,000 passive sensors and 34 active radiation detectors, according to DLR. One of the manikins, Helga, will fly to the Moon unprotected while the other one, Zohar, will wear a radiation protection vest called the AstroRad (which was developed by American aerospace company Lockheed Martin and Israeli startup StemRad).

As they travel aboard the Orion spacecraft to the Moon, Helga and Zohar will be affected by the harsh environment of space. The manikins, having traveled beyond the protective shielding of Earth's magnetosphere, will be exposed to various types of space radiation, like charged particles produced by the Sun or energy particles trapped within Earth's atmosphere. Space radiation is known to alter molecules of DNA, which is obviously not good for human health. Upon their arrival back at Earth, data collected from the two manikins will help researchers to better understand the level of protection provided by the newly developed AstroRad vest.
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NASA Is Sending Artificial Female Bodies To the Moon To Study Radiation Risks More

NASA Is Sending Artificial Female Bodies To the Moon To Study Radiation Risks

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  • Radiation on reproductive organs (Score:5, Informative)

    by CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) on Tuesday May 03, 2022 @11:52PM (#62501564)

    My first thought was they were studying the effects of radiation on reproductive organs to see if there were any chromosome mutations that might cause problems, but a little bit of Googling shows this type of study has already been done on cancer patients and the answer is No.

    https://www.radiationanswers.o... [radiationanswers.org]

    • Depends on what radiation you're talking about. Some effects we can emulate on Earth. Is this about the effects of GCR? That's probably easier to measure in space.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      NASA set a limit of 3% of the lifetime exposure limit for radiation for astronauts. The limit is lower for women because studies have found that for the same dose of radiation the probability of developing lung cancer is double that of men.

      • Kinda makes you wonder why. I mean, if it was something where the bodies differ considerably, sure, but lungs? Aren't they technically working the same way?

        • Cancer is misogynistic. No other explanation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It was based mostly on data about the survivors of the two US atomic bombings. Fortunately there haven't been that many opportunities to study the effects of radiation exposure on large numbers of people since.

          They are currently looking at increasing the limit and making it the same for everyone, regardless of age and gender. The limit will be set as what is safe for a young woman, the type of astronaut thought to be at the greatest risk.

          • Hmm.... I don't know if that's a good baseline. It was likely a lot of women who had to do the cleanup work in the affected areas while the men were shipped off to fight the lost war to the end, thus removing them from the irradiated area, so they didn't breathe in the contaminated air...

            And that's only one possible scenario.

  • Perhaps the worst slashdot headline ever (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otis B. Dilroy III ( 2110816 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @12:20AM (#62501598)
    In 23 years of reading.

    • Fembots in Space (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      Perhaps the worst slashdot headline ever

      Agreed. They should have gone with the above. or "Fembots on the Moon".
      What could possibly go wrong?

      Is there a genuine need for this, or is it just more wokeness from NASA? I hope all body types, races and genders are represented in this experiment :-(

      But given the dreadful failure of the latest SLS wet test, I will not be holding my breath on the Artemis launch. How hard would it be to put Orion on a Falcon Heavy?
      I know it cannot put both CM and ESM into direct lunar inmjection, so will require 2 launche

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > more wokeness from NASA? I hope all body types, races and genders are represented in this experiment :-(

        Why not test geeks instead of the in-shape types?

      • Is there a genuine need for this, or is it just more wokeness from NASA? I hope all body types, races and genders are represented in this experiment :-(

        Women have something like twice the cancer risk of men from space radiation (mostly cosmic). In the absence of electrostatic shielding this is a huge issue for long duration missions. There may well be certain missions limited to older men due to unacceptable cancer risks.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      As click-bait it's a B+

    • NASA Is Sending (...) To the Moon To Study Radiation Risks

      Since there doesn't appear to be a damn thing wrong with this headline, go ahead. Mad Libs your way to an acceptable summary given the content.

  • Also, an added expense (Score:3)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @01:11AM (#62501652)

    They should make sure the "women" are accompanied either by chastity belts or a couple of gallons of pure alcohol.

    • They should make sure the "women" are accompanied either by chastity belts or a couple of gallons of pure alcohol.

      Considering the way things are rapidly going downhill in this country, someone will probably suggest these women be accompanied by a male relative.

  • How Austin Powers Fembot of NASA
  • Mars needs women.
  • [STUPID COMMENT ALERT] For some reason the headline reminds me of some geek movie of the mid 80s.

  • I suppose it is cheaper since then don't need life support

  • If I was designing a lunar mission I wouldn't be hauling dummies. I'd be shipping a big solar panel, an automated hole borer and a string of radiation sensors.

    The moon has no atmosphere or protective magnetic field, so surface radiation doses are significantly higher than on earth. ( https://www.science.org/doi/10... [science.org] ). So if we want to have a long term presence we need some kind of radiation protection. (As well as the obvious need for water).

    The most likely shielding material for a prolonged stay on the

    • Best place to create a moon base would be a cave. Radiations are mostly OK, but without an atmosphere, even a minor meteor strike is lethal.

    • And in the meantime they'll be getting dosed by high energy radiation, so yes, this data matters.

      "but the surface material has been subject to millennia of proton irradiation and will have become slightly activated"

      Trivial. The material is not inately radioactive so at some point it'll hit an equilibrium where it loses it as fast as it gains it from the sun .If its no longer getting hit by radiation from the sun it'll lose it very quickly so I suspect you'd only need to go a few tens of cm down before there

      • Huh? There'll always be a ground station pointed at the moon.

        Uh, no? Luna may always present the same hemisphere to Earth (with a little wobble), but it doesn't always see the same hemisphere of Earth. Keith appears to be thinking of designing his own mission complete with his own ground station, and if there's only one (unlike NASA's Deep Space Network), there's plenty of times when the Moon isn't in its sky.

    • If I was designing a lunar mission I wouldn't be hauling dummies. I'd be shipping a big solar panel, an automated hole borer and a string of radiation sensors.

      The first Artemis flight isn't going to land on the Lunar surface, so of what use is a hole borer? It's just a flyby to test the spacecraft. And since that test needs to be done anyway, might as well take along some dummies.

  • There is no point sending men to Mars for colonisation, you can just send a range of sperm types for the women you send to be impregnated with.

  • I guess that is just so that astronauts can easily see when the project goes tits-up.

  • manikin != mannequin (Score:3, Informative)

    by sander123 ( 120105 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @06:00AM (#62502016)

    I did not know that

    manikin = A jointed model of the human body, as used in medical training or as an artist's lay figure.
    mannequin = A dummy used to display clothes in a shop window.

    You learn something everyday.

  • It's a well known fact that attractive women are more at risk of attracting high energy Alpha male particles....

  • SEND in the FEM-BOTS!!!!

  • Wow, this post is just... no.

    Why does it matter they're female?

    What kind of psychopath spells "mannequin" like that?

  • before they ship the mannequins, don't they need to build a theme park and include blackjack?

  • Crucial research (Score:3)

    by Rambo Tribble ( 1273454 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2022 @10:17AM (#62502660) Homepage
    Few realize how woefully inadequate our knowledge of the effects of space radiation on artificial female bodies is. As it stands, we can hardly say space is safe for artificial females.
  • Whey they return, someone gets to be part of the Elite government organization, the "Female Body Inspectors."

  • got rid of all their worn down copulation dolls.

  • Are they hot?
  • Should have sent them with Blue Origin - Amazon Women on the Moon
  • they're sending Realdolls to the moon, which would be perfect for:

    "collecting data about ... vibrations."

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