Astronauts at Risk in Solar Proton Storms: STS-117 Atlantis and STEREO Prepare the Way for Safe Space Exploration with 3D

Atlantis and ISS are within Earth's protective magnetosphere. Beginning in 2011, NASA plans manned lunar launches, then manned and robotic launches to Mars. Astronauts will be at risk for radiation sickness from solar proton storms.

Astronauts are preparing to launch today in NASA's STS-117 Atlantis on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Starting at 1:30 P. M. you can watch NASA live TV coverage. Astronauts in space beyond Earth's protective magnetosphere is one step closer to becoming reality, and the threat astronauts will face from radiation sickness is one step closer to being solved.

NASA plans to have a lunar launch in preparation by 2011. The moon's sunlight side is exposed to 10 billion tons of solar proton radiation whenever there is a solar storm spewing coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These go hurtling at one million miles per hour into space. Any astronaut at a lunar station or on an extended mission to Mars would potentially be suddenly hit by 400 rems of radiation, enough to kill a person. What is NASA doing to solve the problem of solar CME radiation?

STEREO, or the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory, has begun sending back 3D images of the Sun, tracking solar storms and CMEs. With the binocular or stereoscopic vision of events on the Sun produced by STEREO's twin satellites, scientists can for the first time measure the speed and distance of CMEs and the proton storms that precede them. These measurements provide a crucial step toward predicting upcoming solar radiation events. Astronauts could be warned and given time to run to shelter as a result of advance warnings based on accurate predictions.

Currently, SOHO is the primary source of solar information. It is in a heliocentric orbit (orbiting around the Sun) positioned between Earth and the Sun. SOHO sees events in a straight-on manner from one perspective, so measurements of speed and distance are unreliable because there is no perspective and no corroborating known measurement data.