Important Research Results NASA Is Not Talking About (Update)
Houston, We Have Another Problem: Study Shows that Space Travel is Harmful to the Brain
“The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”
Galactic Cosmic Radiation Leads to Cognitive Impairment and Increased AB Plaque Accumulation in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease, PLoS (original research paper)
Keith’s note: I can’t seem to find any mention of this NASA-funded research at NASA.gov. Given the animal rights controversy that surrounded these experiments, and the results of this specific research project (with clear relevance to missions to asteroids, Mars, etc.), you’d think that NASA would want taxpayers, stakeholders, and the media, to know about these findings. Guess not.
NASA produces a regular listing of publications (NASA Spaceline Current Awareness) on the space life science research it funds. However, NASA is unable to find a way to publish it online. As a result no one really gets to see what the agency does – unless they visit SpaceRef, that is. We have a complete archive online stretching back to 1999.
Keith’s update: This PLoS research paper made the rounds of various news outlets – all of them asking the question: Does space travel cause/aggravate Alzheimer’s? Given than many of us have had our families directly affected by this disease, stories that mention it tend to get our attention. NASA’s public response? Nothing. Yet, its not as if they are not concerned about radiation health (they funded this research after all). This was a perfect opportunity for the agency to show how its research not only serves space exploration needs but also has a relevance to issues facing the public.
By coincidence, this solicitation “Development of the Expandable Coil Concept” was issued today by NASA JSC and shows one way that this issue is being addressed in terms of spacecraft design. Yet another golden opportunity for NASA to link up its research and inform the public. Again, nothing but silence. If NASA does care enough to tell people what they are doing, then how can the agency expect people to care enough to be interested?
NASA JSC Solicitation: Development of the Expandable Coil Concept, NASA JSC
“NASA/JSC has a requirement to continue the study of active radiation shielding for crew protection, a key challenge with human exploration of space.”
Radiation Protection and Architecture Utilizing High Temperature Superconducting Magnets, NASA
NASA (or at least JSC) has known for years that a Mars mission would require extensive shielding to prevent brain damage, it was just a question of how much damage. It’s also a concern for lunar bases. It was discussed in meetings I was in back in the 1990s. Research to quantify the problem was in the critical path for such missions.
As for your comment that “you’d think that NASA would want taxpayers, stakeholders, and the media, to know about these findings”, I’d suggest that you cut them some slack until after the federal holiday passes. The article is dated today, and may have been under embargo until publication. The authors seem to have put out a press release on this and y’all got it. Remember that JSC and the other centers are pretty much empty except for MCC from Dec 20-Jan 2 each year.
You are quite correct that this is not a new issue – I recall similar discussions and reports from the 1980s when I worked at NASA’s Life Science Division. This study does provide new specificity whereas previous studies did not. As for NASA’s awareness – this research is funded by NASA so it was clearly aware of it. The paper was submitted to PLoS some time ago so it is curious that no one at NASA knew that the results were being published.
Keith, even if this is not published, the research circles have been very active in discussion on this for quite a while. Department of Defense has done far more research in regards to this in order to understand cognitive abilities during a radiation or nuclear weapon incident. A lot of these results were and are still kept secret.
This is bad.6′ of concrete to stop these iron particles.A Moon base looks like the logical choice.Quick trip,underground shelter.Get the garden going,air and water and be self sustaining.No many resupply trips like ISS.Duty would be years long,so not many return flights.The gardener would be the most important person.About equal to the engineer running the air and water.Expensive at first,but should be cheaper later.
Hmmm – so maybe we should focus on going very long distances quickly through technologies such as VASIMIR and focus more on human radiation mitigation and protection technologies – oh, oh, that WAS the Obama plan post-Constellation – we can’t do THAT; it might delay us getting to Mars within some middle-aged baby boomers’ lifespans; we have to go NOW!
The full article is here:
http://www.plosone.org/arti…
It says:
“The doses used in this study are comparable to those astronauts will see on a mission to Mars”
But also:
“Animals were loaded…. and irradiated … at a dose rate ranging from 0.1–1 Gy/min”
Which means the entire mission-equivalent dose was delivered within one minute!
This seems very aggressive, and the paper does not discuss this at all. (If I missed it, please correct me)
It is known that radiation damage usually has to do with exposure rate, since the body can tolerate certain radiation levels using various corrective mechanisms.
So if you were to be exposed to the entire background cosmic radiation you’d be exposed to (down here on Earth) in the next 10 years, but all at once, you’d be in trouble, whereas normally you wouldn’t be.
Just sayin’
This is a good point. Other research has shown that the magnitude of radiation effects is dependent on the rate of exposure. A certain dose delivered in a brief burst has been shown to be much more damaging than the same dose absorbed over a lengthy period.
This has been known for a long time; I think conclusions about HSF based on this work (using a mouse model and a heavy rate of exposure) are apt to be flawed.
At best, it can be said that this paper adds to the body of knowledge on the mechanisms of biological radiation damage.
The hysterics over “6′ of shielding” or “OMG the astronauts are going to die” is just that. It is not supported by anything in this paper.
I followed up on some of the referenced papers. People need to chill. There’s radiation in space, everyone knows it, lots of people at NASA are studying it, and nobody is ignoring anything.
Any mission to Mars will be based on the results of many experiments and measurement, including the ones cited in this paper.
Explain why the architecture has not accounted for the mass of GCR protection. Start with Constellation’s lunar architecture (6-day lunar sorties–get?) and then proceed to Mars DRM 5.
Explain how regolith is going to solve the Mars transit problem and how this was included in the architecture.
Explain how proposals to use propellant as shielding (with either 5m or 7m diam tanks) are not considered in architecture, which considers drop tanks, and no rocks or regolith either.
Explain how many folks make up “lots”, the ones studying GCR mitigation and how much funding is being received. Then describe the adequacy of the proposals accepted and the ones rejected.
The elephant in the room….is what comes to mind.
ssssslow down.
You need to define what the problem is.
From the paper that this article is referencing, we know that mice that are prone to neural defects, when bombarded with radiation at an intensity of over a MILLION times higher than the normal rate, after 6 months, show a higher degree of neural damage than the control group.
So while it is useful data, it is not exactly something we can base a spacecraft design on.
Then, I haven’t seen the Mars transit vehicle yet – have you? I am pretty sure they won’t end up sitting inside the reentry capsule for 6 months.
As for “Lots” – I haven’t seen a single discussion about a manned trip to Mars (or anywhere BEO) that didn’t cover radiation hazards… So I have no reason to think that NASA is about to send people to their death (or mental annihilation).
WRT dosages: You missed this in the original paper:
“The doses used in this study are comparable to those astronauts will see on a mission to Mars [2], [3], raising concerns about a heightened chance of debilitating dementia occurring long after the mission is over.”
2. Nelson GA (2003) Fundamental space radiobiology. Gravit Space Biol Bull 16: 29-36.
3. Cucinotta FA, Durante M (2006) Cancer risk from exposure to galactic cosmic rays: implications for space exploration by human beings. Lancet Oncol 7: 431-435. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(06)70695-7.
This is exactly what I was referencing: they gave them the entire 3-year dose in a 1 minute exposure.
The ratio between 1 minute and 3 years is 1.5 million…. So the radiation rate was simply enormous.
(I found [2] online and read it too. If you have a copy of [3] I’d appreciate it)
These pathological increases are particularly concerning for astronauts
who will be exposed to GCR in upcoming deep space missions. In this
regard, one major caveat of our model is that mice were subjected to
acute exposures with a single HZE species. It is not known how the CNS
will respond to the complex and chronic low-dose GCR environment of
space. Moreover, astronauts will not likely be familial AD carriers.
Therefore, while many of the pathological processes are believed to be
similar, this model does not reflect the complete human condition.
However, for the one aspect we can replicate, the accumulation of Aβ,
our findings demonstrate that whole body exposure to 56Fe particle HZE radiation enhances pathological processes associated with progression of AD.
Found it for you.
Like plaque,inflammation and cognitive problems.I heard them say on ISS update that they check for cognitive problems.
“Therefore, while many of the pathological processes are believed to be similar, this model does not reflect the complete human condition.”
“56Fe particle HZE radiation enhances pathological processes associated with progression of AD.”
These 2 statements are indicative that they want more funding. The very thought that they attempted this with such extreme dose rates and tried to compare this to GCR is unsettling. I’d venture to say more funding was the objective from the beginning.
Bombard with full level in a the shortest amount of time and if no issues…things would be great! No more testing or research is needed….IOW outta work! ever hear of accelerated testing?
And their objective was more funding?… give us all a break.
You simply cannot make that correlation for this type of exposure without some justification. There is something called dose-dose rate response that the authors neglected to discuss and is not very well known for these types of cells and radiation type.
Now if they were talking about solar protons, maybe that would be correctable due to the higher dose rates, but they were using Iron ions.
This is useful work potentially for radiation therapy, but to sound the alarm bells via press release and tie this to GCR exposure in space is a big jump and I bet the authors know it.
The mice they used are also prone to neurological deficits, including AD. Obviously, not a big deal either.
I agree. The radiation dose was acute and doesn’t necessarily reflect chronic exposure, particularly since the level of inflammation was a factor in the mechanism of damage. Realistically, however, the cost of a chronic HZE exposure is pretty daunting. One place to do this might be CERN, which is about to start a 6-week lead ion run.
Personally I think the level of radiation damage is acceptable for a single mission to and from Mars. Nevertheless for longer or repeated missions better radiation protection is clearly needed for biological humans. Artificial intelligence, of course, doesn’t have this problem since radiation-hardened electronics are already available and I suspect this will prove a more feasible alternative.
From the article:
“For over 25 years, NASA has been funding research to determine the
potential health risks of space travel in an effort to both develop
countermeasures and determine whether or not the risks warranted sending
men and women on extended missions in deep space”
So perhaps its time to actually *develop* an active GCR solution rather rely on passive mass shielding? At the same time raise the technology readiness levels of 100s of technologies sitting idle/ignored for these 25 years. Most of this is development work, and yes, further research at lower dollar levels will be needed for higher specific mass/ lower cost solutions.
Comments:
“Research to quantify the problem was in the critical path for such missions.”
…because the mission cannot take place without it (IOW critical path by definition)
“However, NASA is unable to find a way to publish it online.”
Not published nor peer reviewed….it should raise red flags on every new bill/program put forth by congress.
but, wait for it….
(c) Sense of Congress Regarding Human Space Flight Capability
Assurance- It is the sense of Congress that the Administrator shall
proceed with the utilization of the ISS, technology development, and
follow-on transportation systems (including the Space Launch System,
multi-purpose crew vehicle, and commercial crew and cargo transportation
capabilities) under titles III and IV of this Act in a manner that
ensures– …”
build a colonization sized HLV and a capsule without GCR protection which severely limits funding for everything else……Sense?
This has been known for quite a while. We’ve known that you have to travel fast or shield quite extensively to prevent this. I don’t know why this continues to be discussed as a new problem, in essence it is just creating new problems. Muscle atrophy and bone loss are pretty big problems as well with prolonged spaceflight.
There are far too many NASA researchers using dollars on rediscovering these issues. NASA needs to focus on countermeasures, and VASIMIR is not one of them (it isn’t nearly as efficient or useful as claimed). Moon base regolith shielding is a good start.
Constellation would have got us there, but only a handful of times and dangerously if that. The acute mortality hazards of Ares I and V launch were accepted at the time, yet this brain syndrome is more of a concern? Give me a break. The only concern should be not using NASA research dollars on a solution. This research does next to nothing to mitigate the problem.
Few in Administrative roles at the agency think this way in concrete fashion to do anything about it, thus we have no manned vehicle, no mission and are teetering on irrelevancy.
It does do one useful thing, although expensively, it provides more awareness that the problem still exists and that nothing useful is being done to find a solution (that we know of). I’d say that any sane effort to spread this message is good.
Do these problems randomly disappear or am I missing something?
Nothing useful is being done because it requires an immense scale to do it, whether it is massive passive shielding or a lot of power for active shielding.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that both of the approaches you refer to are valid approaches. To the best of my knowledge (and I’ve looked) no one has ever properly quantified either of these. In other words, exactly how big are “immense” and “massive”?
The problem is hard, granted. But until we know all the numbers — rates, maximums, etc. that the body can tolerate to some (yet to be defined) acceptable extent, for all of the radiation (and similar) hazards involved for a given duration flying a given flight path, we know exactly nothing about what it is going to take to solve the problem.
Second, even if we did have all of these numbers, we don’t know the optimum shielding material(s), the thickness/mass required, how they’ll ablate over time, etc. for the mass shield approach in the space environment. And we don’t have any relevant data on an EM fields, no parameters at all.
All we have is best guesses and people’s offhand ideas. That’s not science or technology; it’s fiction.
Question: Has anybody tested using both mass and EM shielding, positionally alternating them to try and reduce the serious secondary radiation problem. Is there any theoretical work on this even? I can’t find any (of, course that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been considered).
A final thought: Everything from light bulbs to nuclear reactors were too big, too vulnerable, too power consuming, too hard, too just-about-everything in their original incarnations. Personally, I won’t be surprised when an effective shielding method is developed that doesn’t mass twice what it’s protecting and consume three times the power — if and when serious work is done by capable, serious people, instead of just endlessly repeating meaningless two-bit experiments and concluding, yet again, Yup! it’s a problem all right.
I think we need two separate terms; one that means serious research and one that means pointless research. I’m guessing that the economy would be much improved if the government and universities stopped funding the latter.
Just my opinion, of course.
Your questions cannot be answered completely here but there are some articles that do answer some of them. A lot of quantifications have been made with mass and EM shielding, and the benefit for EM does not come into play with known methods and materials unless high power densities are available, such as from nuclear power which my opinion is that the agency should have been more serious about decades ago for multiple uses.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov…
http://naca.larc.nasa.gov/s…
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search…
Thank you kindly. I have not seen the first one before and I’ll give a it a read.
I know I’m being a pessimist, but everything I’ve read seems to go so far and then just stop, saying and more work is needed. And then the next group, for almost all topics, simply repeats the same, concluding what has already been accepted as true and accurate. I also have concerns about how much work is done on Earth, within its magnetosphere, gravity well and atmosphere; this has very little validity (to my mind) for spacecraft/ station/ depot use. Also, now that we’re talking more about BEO, it must be treated as an additional, separate set of requirements from LEO, GEO and cis-lunar, since each has its own “weather.”
I suspect that this is something that I have to work through for myself, as opposed to having it explained to me. It’s an emotional issue for me because I think it has long been treated with an attitude of indifference, bordering on negligence. It’s just too important for merely token studies.
Thank for your help.
Steve
Unfortunately, these are not SOA references. yes more work is needed.
Who is it that will bear the responsibility for determining what is “pointless” research? You can just about always find a group who call a given research effort “pointless.” You can also find knowledge we have now, useful knowledge, that came from what might have been considered pointless.
We’ll always have to err on the side of not excluding anything new or different, but there is. I think, a border line that can be drawn, even if it is thick. Funding is awarded only (in theory) after a satisfactory written proposal has been assessed, which is supposed to state the exact purpose and planned events. In a case where the work is specifically for the purpose of attempting to show repeatability of something new or contested, that should be stated. But if a submitted proposal can’t show this, or does not identify the unknown “values” which the proposal is seeking to find, then by default it’s unnecessary repeated work. I haven’t given a very good description of what I’m trying to say, but I think you know what I mean. If something is just a “repeat” job, then any value it may end up containing should already exist from earlier studies/ experiments. Do you not think it’s possible to identify up front and eliminate proposals intended to deliver what is already accepted and understood? Perhaps I’m quite wrong on the theory that any experiment can take an unexpected right turn and uncover something entirely new and unexpected, maybe even unrelated, that is of value. Even granting this, I still think there is a line that can be drawn. One area where this is going to be a growing problem is thesis topics for university students. We must be running out by now. In general, I accept your point of view on this as quite probably more realistic than mine.
Steve, I don’t think thesis or dissertation topics are in danger of running out. As science and engineering evolve, the number of possible applications or implications in other areas of science and engineering increase more rapidly.
As for rating the value of proposed research, I think doing as much would be a process primed for misuse.
“ a process primed for misuse.“
Agreed; that always seems to be the poke in the eye to sensibility.
One thought that occurred to me is making a requirement for the professional peer reviews prior to publication to assign an overall rating (with notes) in two or three areas, such as overall value of the work or level of confidence in the results (exactly what would take thought above my level). Then, two things could result: first, if your rating score doesn’t exceed some acceptable value, it doesn’t get published; and second, if your personal cumulative score is below a certain level, your newer work on the same or similar subject does not get published, until your new work brings your cumulative score back up. If your score is below acceptable for a defined period of time, then your new work on any topic is not published, again until you bring your score back up with new work.
This probably seems an extreme idea at first thought, until you consider the number of people who are publishing these days, and the amount that gets published (almost instantly) on the web. We need a credibility filter that helps identify the real stuff from the foolish-free-for-all that Google! brings up.
I realize that this too has potential for abuse, but I think that’s going to be the case, one way or another, no matter what is done or not done to address this situation.
But if we intelligently constrain the possible “personal profit” from a research proposal, we’re likely going to get more discretion in the acceptance and rejection of proposals. Just my thoughts, of course.
If anyone’s interested, this is a March 2012 presentation about the Expandable Coil shield concept. Looks promising …
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/637…
The presentation says, “HTS material is manufactured and used in applications today,” but the H (high temperature) at which they operate is still might cold by the standards of our current technologies (assuming I’ve understood it correctly).
Contrary to common belief, space is not cold; a vacuum has no temperature (no conductivity) and temperature differences in equipment must be radiated away (often too slow) or heated/ cooled using conventional means, which constantly consumes power.
Given the power requirements to generate and maintain this low operating temperature, on top of every other power requirement, the total electrical power requirements are likely to end up determining the life-time of any spacecraft/ station/ depot using this radiation shielding method. The presentation lists the power estimates as one of the things yet to be determined, so although I’m going to root for this project going forward, I think it’s too early to call it promising. Also, remember that to launch anything using that kind of power you’ve got to get it past the environmental people. And these days, they might just win.
Just my opinion.
The idea of electromagnetic shielding of space radiation is hardly new. There were studies of it back in the 1960s, I believe. But one of the serious issues with it is indeed power consumption. Using superconductors, most of the power consumption will likely be in the cooling systems, which somewhat inconveniently have to surround an inhabited area. I’ve seen estimates of ~50 kW for such a habitat shield, which is on the order of the power generation capability of ISS. Not trivial. The fields required to adequately shield the high energy GCRs dictate the coil currents needed, and those currents are pretty enormous. If such a superconducting system were to quench, because the temperature rose too high, it could get pretty exciting.
There were some ideas about using passive cooling with high temperature superconductors, but again, you’d be passively cooling something that surrounds a habitat. That would result in a pretty chilly habitat.
Now, the idea was originally assumed to be doable with a nuclear power source. Plenty of electrical power. Of course, if you had a nuke, there would be other options for mitigating radiation exposure, like going faster.
FWIW – Wikipedia has included news (and relevant references) of the NASA study (suggesting human spaceflight is harmful to the brain) in several articles including “Alzheimer’s Disease,” “Astronaut,” “Effect of Spaceflight on the Human Body,” “Health Threat From Cosmic Rays,” “Human Spaceflight,” “Manned Spaceflight,” “Space Medicine,” “Weightlessness,” and “2012 in Science” – in any case – Enjoy! 🙂