Space agencies like NASA and private companies like SpaceX led by South African billionaire Elon Musk are now busy formulating plans to achieve Mars colonization. As an initial step, they aim to build a permanent base in the moon, and experts believe that it is one of the most necessary pre-requisite to achieve interplanetary colonization. However, the journey to Mars will not be an easy task, as there are so many dangers associated with this space trip.
Even though rogue asteroids and space debris are undoubtedly dangerous, the most dreaded threat which will be faced by astronauts will be deadly space radiation. Earth is protected from this dangerous radiation by the magnetosphere, but this is not the case with space. It should be noted that these space radiations are basically a form of highly energetic particles ejected from the Sun at great speeds.
Dr Andrzej Fludra, a researcher at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) recently revealed that this radiation is powerful enough to penetrate through spacecraft walls, and thus it will cause potential health risks to astronauts.
''These energetic particles always pose a danger to astronauts in space. Even during the Apollo mission, there was a study that said if it was launched a few weeks this way or that way, they could have been hit by one of these energetic particle streams.
Fortunately, they are quite sparsely distributed in time, so they can happen only once every few days, but when the Sun is very active during the maximum of the solar cycle, they would be launched much more frequently. Maybe even a few times a day," Fludra told Express.co.uk.
In order to avoid this problem, experts believe that humans should initially send artificial intelligent bots to build safe colonies on Mars and the moon so that astronauts can stay safely in these barren lands without facing the harmful effects of space radiation.
A few weeks back, Samantha Rolfe, an astrobiologist at the University of Hertfordshire had claimed that plans to carry humans to Mars could turn out to be a moral catastrophe. Rolfe argues that human missions to the Red Planet may introduce earthly microorganisms that could kill possible alien life that could be harbouring there. The astrobiologist also added that humans who walk on Mars will be exposed to harmful space radiations that may cause serious health issues.
