Spaceship "force field" could protect astronauts on trip to Mars

While there's certainly no shortage of folks working on sending robots to Mars, there's also thankfully a few researchers focusing on making the trip a bit more bearable (and survivable) for us humans, and a group from a consortium of different institutions now say they've made some real progress on that front. Their idea is to use a portable "mini-magnetosphere," which would protect a spacecraft from harmful solar storms and cosmic rays in much the same way the Earth's magnetosphere naturally protects the planet. That is actually an idea that has been around for decades, and was shown last year to be at least theoretically possible, but it has only now been taken beyond the realm of computer simulations. That was apparently possible thanks to the use of an unspecified "apparatus originally built to work on fusion," which allowed researchers to recreate "a tiny piece of the Solar Wind" and confirm that a small "hole" in the wind would indeed be all that would d be necessary to keep astronauts safe. Of course, the leap from the lab to an actual spacecraft is another matter entirely, but the researchers seem to think that there's quite a bit of promise in the idea.

[Via PhysOrg, image courtesy of NASA]

[lowdef @ Nov 4th 2008 7:18PM]

MAGNETO!

[B.C. @ Nov 4th 2008 11:05PM]

Magnito eh? Well I think it's Mag-Neato. har!

Here's a podcast interview about the shield technology

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb02.html

[Woody @ Nov 5th 2008 7:30PM]

Nice

[Haikibutsu @ Nov 4th 2008 7:19PM]

First holograms, now force fields?

[ybd @ Nov 4th 2008 7:21PM]

It must suck to be an astronaut during the travel to and from Mars, all those months and nothing to do but sit in front of a computer.

...oh wait.

[iEye @ Nov 4th 2008 7:39PM]

Space Pron...

waaaaay better than terrain pron... chicks there have 3 fun bags!

[leo @ Nov 5th 2008 7:20AM]

"baby you make me wish i had 3 hands"

best line of that movie.

[Mike10010100 @ Nov 4th 2008 7:22PM]

Magnetosphere is good for trips to Mars, but if we want to go to deep space, then we'd better start working on a replica of the heliosphere.

[radiodejaylee @ Nov 4th 2008 7:24PM]

Beam me up Scottie!

[IndiaTech @ Nov 4th 2008 7:43PM]

You can't beam some one up when the Shields are up. Duh...

[ntlam @ Nov 5th 2008 5:22AM]

R2D3 "Warning! Warning! Our sheild is low!"

[GreezyG @ Nov 4th 2008 7:41PM]

yay!!! It's finally 1985!!!!! Thanks Walt Disney... but where the hell is my flying car!?

[thedesolate1 @ Nov 4th 2008 7:42PM]

I hear Bruce Willis might be in need of one of these in 2012... come people lets hurry this up we don't have all century!

[Plumloco1 @ Nov 4th 2008 7:53PM]

When I read this it makes me wonder if UFO's are using this technology currently and if that would explain why they often appear as changing color lights, because they are actually having mini Aurora Borealis like effects happening from cosmic rays hitting the simulated magnetosphere that is around their spaceships ... but then again maybe I just have to much time at work to think about ridiculous things like this.

[youngstunna @ Nov 4th 2008 8:16PM]

an interesting thought.

[J-Rad @ Nov 4th 2008 11:44PM]

Pot does wonders

[LonnieDvD @ Nov 4th 2008 8:12PM]

I would love to be one of those first people to walk on Mars, but I know it will never happen. Not unless I somehow became rich, then I could afford one of those private space trips.

[wallace @ Nov 4th 2008 8:56PM]

I wanna be the first to take a dump on another planet! Lets fund our trip together!

[radiodejaylee @ Nov 4th 2008 8:26PM]

@India Tech, oh yeah, forgot about that for a second.... going on 10 hours of sleep in two days, thats my excuse so there :P

[Str1ker @ Nov 4th 2008 9:29PM]

Can't they use that invisibility technology they are working on to "bend" away all harmful rays?
If I remember correctly they have already managed to bend microwaves so that objects are invisible to radar (is it microwaves?)

[Plothole @ Nov 4th 2008 11:12PM]

There are two reasons that wouldn't work. First of all, at least last I checked anyways, they've only managed to bend microwaves. This wavelength is well below the visible spectrum, which is in turn well below the extremely dangerous x-ray and gamma spectra. And then second, the biggest danger isn't actually from high frequency photons. In fact a magnetosphere doesn't protect against that. The biggest danger, and what this can protect against, is the rapidly moving charged particles in solar wind.

[Mike @ Nov 5th 2008 1:56AM]

Exactly Plothole, this protects against particles, not electromagnetic radiation. Furthermore, those particles must be charged, as you stated, for a magnetic field to do anything to them.

[spaceb @ Nov 4th 2008 9:48PM]

Looks like a really expensive turd.

[Mobius_1 @ Nov 4th 2008 9:50PM]

Now a shield to protect astronauts, what's next?

[mc @ Nov 4th 2008 10:34PM]

In communist russia, astronauts protect shield.

[frankXchange @ Nov 4th 2008 9:59PM]

Is this the same technology they were working on at Nasa/JPL back in the 90's? The premise is that a giant electromagnetic bubble would used with probes to create a giant solar sail, obviating problems inherent with a physical solar sail.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/m2p2_winglee_010621.html

[granny down east @ Nov 5th 2008 12:09AM]

We'd better be working on breeding humans that don't need to breathe oxygen.

[Mike @ Nov 5th 2008 2:00AM]

huh? Are they going to forget their spacesuits? That's like telling a bunch of people at a scuba shop they better hope people stop needing air to breathe or they'll go out of business.

[Ian @ Nov 5th 2008 5:30PM]

lol i think what he meant was the fact that you would need a shit ton of oxygen to get to mars and back.

[grifmx @ Nov 5th 2008 12:55AM]

It's not the dangerous traveling to another planet that excites me, it's all the cool stuff that comes out of the research of attempting to travel to another planet that keeps me looking forward!

With Moore's Law and nano technology, etc., we live in some pretty exciting times!

[d889 @ Nov 5th 2008 3:53AM]

people have been trying to create magnet fields for a while now for exactly this purpose, you need one to survive in space.

right now the best way to do so is with a nuclear (or in the case of this particular one, fusion) reactions, which create a magnetic field.

we can make one that can surround a spacecraft, but the problem is it takes a LOT of energy to do so with our current technololgy, thus the need for something more feasible

[aibonlengket @ Nov 5th 2008 5:45AM]

Isn't this a proof that there has been NO man went to the moon, because they can't survive without magnet shield or a very thick metal. Let's remember astronaut on the moon only use a thin aluminum in their suit.

hmmmm... anyone thinking the same as me, or I'm just weird.

[Plothole @ Nov 5th 2008 6:02AM]

@aibonlengket

It's needed to survive in space for a prolonged period of time. The moon missions took days. Not long enough for the radiation to cause more than a mild irritation when the astronauts tried to close their eyes (as they would report *flashes* when they did). A mars mission would leave the crew exposed for months.

[Magallanes @ Nov 5th 2008 7:17AM]

May be this force field can do the job, also to give it for free a nice leukemia.

[Jake Tobak @ Nov 5th 2008 10:17AM]

Make it powered by solar winds and you win.

[Adam @ Nov 5th 2008 2:51PM]

Great.... It's 2012, an astronuat is happily walking around on Mars with his / her nifty litle magneto-force field, when he get's a an alarm alert. Quick glance at their "Everything under the sun and even gives you a quck shave" mobile device, he sees that Windows 9 just locked up, but not to worry, Windows will attempt to shutodwn, repair and and bring back up his force field, as long as he doesn't mind getting friend in the mean time.

Windows 9 - Good enough for personal and business use... um, not so good on Mars.

Ok... Admitedely, this post sounded a whole lot funnier in my head before I typed it out.

Cheers

[SuperSparky @ Nov 5th 2008 8:11PM]

How much Gauss is necessary? Would an apparatus that generates magnetism outweigh just a series of seriously powerful permanent magnets? Permanent magnet technology has come pretty far. How much farther would it need to go to have a virtually unlimited amount of protection?

Perhaps a hybrid system could be made? The electric one for severe solar weather and the perm-mag one for every day protection.

Think about it, despite the power generation problems, you have the weight of one serious coil of wire. Why not strategically placed and seriously powerful permanent magnets?

[Josh Riesen @ Nov 6th 2008 11:38AM]

Boy, is the Covenant gonna be pissed when they get here. Heh