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As NASA continues to push for a permanent presence on the Moon, future space travelers will face plenty of dangers, from micrometeorite showers battering the lunar surface to the unknown effects of spending prolonged periods of time in just one sixth of Earth’s gravity.
Deep space radiation also remains a major hazard. NASA’s Artemis 2 mission, which is slated to launch as early as next week, will see astronauts venturing far beyond the Moon, reaching the furthest mankind has ever been away from home, and likely exposing them to significantly higher levels of radiation.
The fear: such cosmic rays could penetrate astronauts’ bodies and damage DNA or increase the risk of developing cancer.
But thanks to recent research by an international team of researchers, there may be a peculiar “cavity” of reduced cosmic radiation that could provide them with shelter. This cavity includes Moon and extends far beyond it into space, and only appears at a specific moment of time in the Moon’s orbit around the Earth, at which point cosmic rays die down significantly.
As detailed in a paper published this week in the journal Science Advances, the team analyzed data collected by China’s Chang’e-4 lander, which became the first spacecraft to land and explore the far side of the Moon in early 2019.
They found a surprising “region of reduced [galactic cosmic ray] flux in the prenoon sector of the lunar orbit,” challenging the presumption that radiation is “uniformly distributed over the Earth-Moon distance.”
A handy illustration by the researchers explains when and where this cavity forms. The white dotted circle illustrates the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. Just before dawn on the Moon, the “galactic cosmic ray [GCR] cavity,” as illustrated by the brighter streak of light, forms thanks to the Earth’s magnetic field — sheltering the Earth’s natural satellite from the Sun’s radiation.
The implications for future space travel could be considerable, since the findings suggest that our planet’s protective magnetic field is far more extensive than previously thought.
“This cavity indicates that the influence of Earth’s magnetic field within the space environment extends unexpectedly up to and far beyond the lunar orbit,” the paper reads.
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