Moon 2 Mars Space Radiation Protection “Buying Down” Risks to Crew

While working on the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts receive orders of magnitude more radiation exposure than any modern terrestrial radiation worker. As NASA develops long-duration mission capabilities beyond LEO, crew radiation exposures levels may exceed our current ISS knowledge base and approach or exceed NASA’s new radiation standard of 600 mSv for the longest duration missions to Mars. Within NASA’s Moon 2 Mars (M2M) architecture planning, technology solutions to significantly reduce exposures are mass prohibitive. These larger exposures will put crew at increased risk of developing cardiac, vascular, and cerebrovascular diseases in addition to radiogenic cancers. Research is required to quantify these risks and identify countermeasure strategies within mission constraints (mass, power, volume). The integrated solution space to protect crew spans both physical and biological mitigation strategies. Agreement on space radiation health research and test objectives is needed to align biological deliverables with Agency technology roadmaps to develop an integrated protection strategy. Here, we focus on the biological aspects of protection including crew exposure levels for each M2M mission segments and research objectives to “buy down’ associated radiogenic health risk.