Risks of long-term exposure to space radiation confirmed with mouse experiment

Ordinary people are now able to travel in space, and the possibility of long-term manned flights to deep space, such as to the Moon and Mars, is increasing. Yet space radiation remains a limiting factor for manned exploration.

A team from Osaka Metropolitan University studied the biological effect of the phenomenon by launching frozen mouse embryonic stem cells from the ground to the ISS, exposing them to space radiation for over four years, and quantifying the biological effect by examining chromosome aberrations.

Their experiment results show, for the first time, that the actual biological effect of space radiation mirrors predictions previously made by other researchers.

Scientists have been conducting intensive studies to measure physical doses of space radiation to better understand its effect on the human body.

However, since most of the studies until now were conducted on the ground, not in space, the results suffered from uncertainties, given...