The American aerospace agency NASA and the Israeli Space Agency (ISA) have signed an agreement to test the new AstroRad anti-radiation jacket in the first mission to the Moon Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), which will be carried out with the new NASA Space Launch System SLS).
AstroRad is already the second product of the American-Israeli company StemRad after StemRad 360 Gamma, the world's first wearable shield providing significant protection from gamma radiation, according to Space.com.
The company StemRad is based in Tel Aviv and cooperates with one of the main contractors of NASA, Lockheed Martin, which develops the manned spacecraft Orion. It is planned to be sent to the Moon on an SLS rocket as part of a three-week mission in late 2019 - early 2020.
Cosmic radiation is a great threat to space missions in the study of deep space. Solve this problem in the future will help the AstroRad vest, believe its developers. Within the EM-1 test mission, two dummies (created by the German Aviation and Space Center) will be on board the Orion spacecraft, each of which will be connected to thousands of different radiation sensors and sensors. One of the dummies is planned to be worn in the AstroRad vest, the second one will be without it.
Although the Orion capsule is unlikely to encounter a powerful solar wind on the way to the Moon on the way to the Moon, the device will pass through the Van Allen radiation belts - zones of energetically charged particles formed under the influence of the solar wind. According to the developers of the vest, this will be an excellent test for their new product.
If the tests prove successful, the AstroRad can be used as part of manned missions in the far space. In addition, in 2018, it is planned to check the vest on board the International Space Station. As part of this mission, developers want to test its ergonomics in a microgravity environment.
