Sorry, would-be Martians: New stumbling block on the road to Mars

It's no surprise that astronauts making the trek to Mars would face doses of radiation on the way, unshielded by the atmosphere and magnetic field that protects us Earthlings. Until now, though, we didn't know how much radiation they'd be facing.

It's not great news.

Back in 2011, as NASA prepared to send their Curiosity rover on its way to the Red Planet, they decided to take advantage of the opportunity to measure the amount of cosmic radiation encountered on the actual trip to Mars by adding a specialized monitor to the capsule. Bundled up with Curiosity for the trip, the monitor made a decent stand-in for how much radiation — both solar cosmic rays and galactic cosmic rays — a person inside a spacecraft would be dosed with. Solar rays are easier to block, because they're not as strong, but can be bountiful when our Sun flares. Galactic rays are considered the more dangerous type, being stronger and made of denser particles. Neither is something you want to be exposed to for a long time, like, say, the 250 day trip to Mars.

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Today, NASA released what the monitor saw, converted into sieverts. You might remember those from Fukushima reactor stories after the 2011 Japan Earthquake; they're the unit of measure used to describe how a dose of radiation affects the body.

As part of their safety protocols, NASA sets limits on the acceptable radiation doses for astronauts. The current lifetime limits are generally between 0.6 to 1 sievert for women, and 0.8 to 1.2 sieverts for men. The monitor travelling with Curiosity recorded roughly 0.3 sieverts on the way to Mars; implying a return trip should put you just over 0.6. And that's not including any time you've spent in space already, on the ISS, training flights, or the time you spend on the surface of Mars itself, which lacks Earth's denser atmospheric and magnetic protections.

There are currently a number of well-publicized plans to head to Mars in the not-too-distant future; these findings may certainly throw a wrench in the works for the proposed fly-by round trip, as well as for the one-way, stay-on-the-surface variety.

But I think you know as well as I do that the types of people planning these grand expeditions are not the type to throw in the towel, regardless of the problem. So, what are the next steps?

"The best thing would be to get there faster," say Cary Zeitlin, principle scientist for the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, CO, according to New Scientist.

This could be done by building an antimatter ship, or by using dilithium crystals (no, seriously). Another possible answer is in developing stronger shielding, although this poses potential problems in making the craft heavier; if a heavier craft can't travel as fast, you could wipe out gains you make in shielding with time added to your exposure.

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Whatever the answer is, we've already got tens of thousands of people waiting to be a part of a new era of human pioneering. While it's important to gather as much information about the risks as possible, in the end, I can't imagine the first people who make the journey are going to be the type to let a little thing like a few millisieverts of radiation stand in their way.

(Photos courtesy: NASA/Getty Images)

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