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The Phantom Adventures

Thu May 28 2009

No no, not this Phantom, this one:

Details from the original press release follow:

He’s an armless, legless, human-shaped torso, a mannequin that looks like he’s wrapped in a mummy’s bandages. Scientists at the European Space Agency call him Matroshka, and like his NASA counterpart Fred, this mannequin is an intrepid space traveler. Now that he’s spent four months on the International Space Station, scientists are learning about the space radiation that Matroshka endured.

Lessons learned from Fred and Matroshka have major implications for NASA’s plans to set up a manned outpost on the Moon and eventually to send people to Mars. Protecting astronauts from the harmful effects of space radiation will be a critical challenge for these extended missions. To design spacesuits, vehicles, and habitats with enough shielding to keep astronauts safe, mission scientists need to know how much radiation –and what kinds –astronauts actually absorb.

[…]

By analyzing the measurements from hundreds of radiation sensors embedded throughout Matroshka’s body, Francis Cucinotta of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and his colleagues found that the models are actually quite good: They’re accurate to within 10% of the measured dose. That means it’s “all systems go” for using these models to plan NASA’s return to the Moon or even a trip to Mars.